Touching From A Distance
by LolaBleu
Summary: On a long enough time line love isn't about sweet things, it's about pain: how much you can inflict and endure and still stick around is the only measure that really means anything.
1. Touching From A Distance

**A/N: **So I wrote most of this about a month ago; basically everything up to where they get high, and then I kinda burned out I guess, and let it sit. But I always knew the ending, and the really the story is all about getting to that point because it was something that's been on my mind for a while, and I figured if it was going to happen it would be something Violet would do. And yes, I'm a huge Joy Division fan.

_warning: Violet/Travis and Violet/Black Dhalia even though they're very brief scenes, but the rest of it is Violate_. _Also a slightly off-color joke about dead mexican nannies. _

* * *

**Prologue**

On a long enough time line love isn't about sweet things, it's about pain: how much you can inflict and endure and still stick around is the only measure that really means anything. It's like a perverse game of chicken; the first one who bails was the one who never really loved.

Her weakness has always been her head and when she sees me it makes the "what if's" swirl and tumble. What if I hadn't raped her mother? What if I hadn't killed the gays? What if I hadn't killed fifteen kids and lit Larry up like a Roman candle one fine day? What if I hadn't lied about it all?

Eventually her frustration peaks and breaks like an orgasm and with the slightest glimpse of a stripy sweater she'll drag me to the bathroom or the basement and pull me apart in a literal, visceral way, the way her thoughts have been pulling her apart mentally.

We both knew after that Norman Rockwell charade of a Christmas that it would only be a matter of time before I was back where I belonged, bullshit forgiveness or not. But forever is a long time, and forcing her hand a little might cut down on the wait. So what if in minutes there'll probably be pieces of me strewn about the basement? It's a consequence of living in a place without consequences. So what about the pain? It makes her feel better, gets us closer to the point of not hurting each other to love each other.

* * *

She cuts a heart shape around my heart and it burns so much better than when I do it to myself; the tug and sting of the blade, the first drops of blood; it's a preamble, a ritual. She traces the cut with her fingers like a little girl drawing pictures in blood, and I'm already half hard from her weight on top of me, her taste in my mouth, and her fingers playing in the mess of it all because this is the closest we get to fucking anymore. "You know those martial arts films where the guy reaches in and rips out the other guys heart with his bare hands?" She's getting her talking done now because at some point she'll cut me for real and I'll blackout from the pain and she wants me to hear what she has to say.

I don't answer because shadows don't have voices, and even if they did I can't because she's shoved her panties in my mouth to gag me. "I asked Charles and my dad if it was possible and they said no. Well, my dad said no. Charles was huffing ether again and kinda passed out and fell on the floor before he could answer." She's looking forlornly at her bloody fingers, the gruesome evidence of her game of finger paints. "I wish it was. I want you to feel what it's like." I do; she doesn't believe me. The echo of her 'go away' still rips me apart better than any weapon she could wield. She's still the sad little dead girl as she sits on top of me and she lets out a sigh before her face suddenly suffuses with light and she looks at me.

"I might have to tie you down this time." Her voice is giddy, and I haven't seen her this happy in a long time, and any other time it would make my damn day, but this time it makes my stomach knot in fear because she's never had to tie me down; it's more enjoyable for both of us if the only thing keeping me here is my obsessive need to please her, to show her just how much I love her by bearing anything she can inflict on me.

"Not going to ask why?" She leans down and her hair fans against my face and I have to stifle a moan even around the fear as her body pressed against mine. "I was thinking what I'd really like to do is rape you, but even if I shove a fire poker up your ass you'd like it because it's me doing it, wouldn't you?" She leans back, feeling the growing hardness through my jeans. "Yeah. That's kind of a problem. But I could always just ask Patrick to do it." She's got her lips over my jugular and when she feels the panicked erratic thrum of my pulse at her words she plants a wet kiss over it. "Next time." She promises and there's a split second of blind relief before she makes her first cut and I scream around the fabric in my mouth. "Wimp."

* * *

I wake up on the basement floor to the wet slurping sounds of Thaddues eating, no doubt macking on one of my vital organs she'd tossed out on the ground. After some experimental prodding to see if I can feel whatever's missing, I make my way back upstairs to find her asleep on a bed left over from the last residents; pilfered, mismatched blankets and pillows around her. There's a sigh I can't stop when I push the hair out of her face, brush a finger across her cheek. She catches my wrist with her hand and tugs me down with her; her head resting in the nook of my shoulder, a hand resting against my heart because that's my weakness.

She fucks with my heart because she can't fuck me, and it feels like her hand is reaching inside of me and mangling what's left of that damaged organ into grotesque shapes.

Her dismembering me is purely for her amusement. This... this is the real punishment. Reminding me I could have this every night. Reminding me that she could have been happy here, with me. She'll sleep contentedly and I'll spend the night slowly filling with self-loathing and disgust until she tells me to 'go away' in the morning if I'm not smart enough to be gone by the time she opens her eyes.

It's better than most nights when I'm relegated to sleeping on the floor like a well trained dog.

* * *

"No way, she'll do it." The twins are having a muttered conversation as I close the basement door behind me. "You shouldn't have given her a choice."

"Shut up. She won't do it, and then she'll have to flash us." They're both looking up at something I can't see, and as I come out from hallway and into the foyer a lit cigarette drops at my feet.

"You're in the way." Violet's standing on top of the banister on the third story, looking down at the three of us. "Move." I hugged the wall, pulling a drag off her cigarette and watched as she outstretched her arms, took a deep breath, and tipped forward, executing a perfect tucked roll. I had to fight the terror rising inside of me, the instinct to try and catch her, brace her fall in some way. She straightened out and smacked into the floor with an impact that shook the house.

Predictably Moira appeared looking disgusted, shouting the twins out of the house before glaring at Violet's corpse and going to get her mop with an irritated cluck of her tongue. Her eyes were glassy and vacant as her blood slowly spread around the toes of my shoes until Moira came back and yelled at me to get her out of there and up to the bathtub where she could bleed without making too much of a mess. I ground out the cigarette on a patch of floor just to piss her off some more before hefting Violet into my arms with a muttered _come on baby_ to take her upstairs, a smile quirking up my mouth; good thing she's dead, if she heard me call her 'baby' she'd smack the shit out of me.

I sat on the edge of the tub and watched the bleeding stop, skin reform, bones knit back together into smooth planes. When she was conscious she smiled up at me, small and sheepish, as I frowned at her. "Lemme guess, Moira's pissed?" She said weakly, closing her eyes.

"Yeah. Me too."

"Why?"

"Why the fuck do you think? I hate seeing you so small, and broken, and _dead_. All I ever wanted to do was protect you and watching that just reminds me that I couldn't save you and I couldn't protect you. Not that you don't know that; not that that isn't the reason you did it." Because it was, and she wouldn't insult me by denying it.

She let out a mirthless chuckle and twisted the tap, pulling off her blood stained clothes as she sat on the bottom of the tub. "Yeah, protect me from finding out that's your a dead psycho murderer and rapist. Thanks so much for protecting me from that truth."

"Enough." It came out as a growl; low and guttural. "I'm so sick of you harping on about that shit. Yes, I fucked up. It's not like I cheated on you, it's not like I can think back on it without wanting to crawl out of my skin. So don't sit there all high and mighty and act like I'm the Goddamn Devil when we both know you wouldn't give a shit if you could live in blissful ignorance." She glared at me over her shoulder, mouth moving to form spiteful words to throw at me before I cut her off.

"That night at the beach I couldn't get it up because thoughts of what I did kept surfacing and it made me sick. Because unlike your mother I didn't enjoy myself." The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them, and we both froze at their impact. Her face went blank with shock and then hardened into something frighteningly familiar; the same mask that twisted my features the morning I decided killing fifteen kids and lighting Larry up seemed like the best idea ever. I thought I might piss myself just like that pathetic little cheerleader.

I waited for her reaction. Screaming, tears, violence; whatever, nothing would have surprised me because my words were so far below the the belt they hit the floor with an audible impact, just like her body smacking into the foyer. Instead what I got was a tight and steady "go away", sending me back to the basement.

* * *

I'd appear, tear soaked apologies pouring from my lips, and she'd tell me to go away. Her voice a lazy refrain as she played cards with the gays. A sleepy whisper from between her blankets at night. All day. All night. For a week. It never got better; the tension just built and intensified until she made her move, and I knew when she watched him cut the back lawn like his bare chest was covered in chocolate sauce just begging to be licked off what was going to happen. I'm not surprised it's her solution because my heart is my weakest point, and she knows it.

So she's writhing in Constance's lap dog's lap playing on old fears, ripping up old wounds, and inflicting new ones that won't heal in a few hours as punishment for what I said. When he's finally inside her she collapsed against him for a second like he's the cure for all that ills her, and it's probably the most honest thing she's done in a while. Whatever. It doesn't matter why she's doing this. I watch because I can't not watch, because it's easier watching it than not knowing. Not knowing every little moan and whimper that escapes her lips and comparing it to the ones that pass her lips when it's us; not knowing every position he fucks her in.

They fuck and she cums and he cums and I'll kill him as soon as he's out the door because I'm the monster, I'm the one who deserves to be punished, and I can't kill her. She pecks him on the lips afterwards and sends him on his way with a few patient and polite words that usher him out the door, but leave it open for a next time. Three feet into the hallway I snapped his neck and watched him gasp once and expire on the hardwood floor. She didn't even look at me as I stood in the doorway for a moment afterward.

It's easy, well easier, to retain some arrogant disinterest in the whole thing when I reduce it to the simple equation of punishment. But then that little moment of honesty floats back up to the top of my brain, breaking the fragile surface tension and everything sinks around it. I take the pain of it out on the walls of the house until my hands break and bleed, until they're nothing but useless hunks of meat.

When dawn arrives it brings anger to replace the pain, and it feels like home to me; safe, comfortable, known, easy. I find the useless piece of filth that she took into her bed having a tea party with Lorraine's little girls. They shriek and cry when I drag him off to feed him to Thaddeus a few times and they probably won't come out for weeks after this. As Thad is smacking his lips over his corpse for the third time I hunt up Hayden and kill her just for good measure, just because she brought him here.

The only thought in my head when I go looking for her is to punish her; to make her hurt a little like she made me hurt because I could deal with the punishment, just not her liking it. But where I find her isn't where I expect to find her, and not who I expect to find her with. She's in the backyard laying on the grass, her little brother held safely against her chest by her arm as he sleeps; I've never seen her hold him before. When I walk up my shadow casts a pall on them both and it would be ironic if it wasn't so fucking tragic, and I wonder what it is about this house and women and babies. "Did you ever dream about us having kids?" I know it's a sore spot even if she won't admit it; a whole different set of "what if" questions she'd rather not think about.

I don't bother keeping my voice low and it wakes the infant up, making him fuss and squeal in her arms, and she doesn't answer until she's gotten him quietly entertained with his little hand wrapped around her finger. "Before I knew you were dead, yeah. Little girl fantasies about what kind of life we'd have together when we grew up and got away from here." She smiles at me, all cruelty and too-white teeth, because she can knock me down and make me feel like shit and all she needs to do it is truthful words. "What do you want?" She asks, turning her attention back to the baby in her arms.

"Planning on fucking the empty-headed pretty boy again?" I don't even bother trying to conceal the bitterness in my voice.

"I don't know. Maybe. It's definitely put me in a better mood." She looks it. She's not wearing her usual million layers, and her movements are free and easy, relaxed. I hate it.

"Suit yourself, but I doubt Travis will be so willing to fuck you again if I'm watching. Actually I doubt anyone will after what I did to him."

I see her cheeks pinch up from a smile as she's looking down, tickling the little ghost, and I think it's for him but I know it's for me when she looks up and I see how predatory it is. "We'll see." She's got victory and viciousness all over her face because it's always more fun when the other person fights back, when they want to hurt you just as much as you want to hurt them, and I'm giving her exactly what she wants.

"Yeah, we will. Maybe he'll teach you how to give a decent blow job."

"Maybe. Then again, if your dick ever makes its way back into my mouth the only thing you'll be thinking about is how I learned no matter how good it feels." Her words were like a cold bucket of truth right to the face. I'd always think of her with him; the way she probably thought of me and Vivien.

"Of course we could just stop this now. We both know you'll come back at some point." I offered, trying to keep my voice hard, and not quite being able to accomplish it.

She leaned in, grazing my ear with her lips. "You're right, I will. Right now though I just want to hurt you for that because the thought of it makes me sick. You know what I did after you left me in the bathroom? Spent an hour dry heaving into the toilet because I was so disgusted that I still wanted you."

So we spent the afternoon sitting and sniping and I wonder how she could look at her brother with unaffected affection and the second her eyes snapped to mine there's a blazing ocean of hate in them. It amazed me how she could flip the switch like that, black/white, like it was two different people in the same body. It made me wonder if the one thing that was supposed to redeem everything was really what set her loose; what made her just as bad as me.

By the time she went in the house I was ripped to shreds by her wielding nothing more deadly than a kid and acting maternal. She'd made me hate the fleshly bag of baby that oozed on her because he got what I wanted; her touch, comforting, and loving, and protecting. She made me hate myself for not saving her because she wouldn't grow up now. She made me feel guilty at my secret glee for keeping her here. The worst though were the strange new longings that came into play, ones that could never be fulfilled; perfect versions of the desires that ripped us apart.

* * *

We're down to olives; a solitary jar left over from the last owners sitting forlornly in the fridge until she decides to fish them out of the half-empty jar with a lone piece of Mrs. Montgomery's finest silver service. She'd just successfully speared one when Hayden walked up and groped me through my jeans as she sneered at Violet. Her face was totally impassive as she plucked the olive off the fork in her hand. She chewed, swallowed, and stabbed Hayden in eye with it before picking out another olive with her fingers and watching the psychotic whore writhe and scream on the floor as she clutched at the piece of cutlery protruding from her face.

She giggled like a school girl when I pushed her up against the fridge, a hand tracing its way up her spine, and whispered _love you too_ in her ear. I felt like repeating her move when Ben stormed in and slit Hayden's throat so she'd come back good as new, but before I could he sent me to the basement. By the time I got back he was in full-on dad/psychiatrist mode lecturing Violet.

"You need to deal with you grief and anger in a healthy way Violet."

She spared him one insolent glance as she fished another olive out of the jar. "Stop being so fucking provincial. I mean really, who gives a shit? She'll be good as new in a few hours."

"Who will be good as new?" Asked Vivien suspiciously as she walked through the back door, making me devoutly thankful I crept back upstairs invisibly. The last time Vivien saw me, despite the fact it was completely accidental, Violet spent an afternoon turning my eyes into puddles of goo. She'd cut. I'd blackout. She'd wait until I was conscious and cut again. She said the resulting mess in my sockets felt like half-formed Jell-O, but didn't taste as good. Moira finally got sick of listening to me screaming and killed both of us to put an end to it.

"Hayden." Violet smiled at her dad and walked out, leaving Ben and Vivien to scream at each other in privacy.

* * *

People watching. It's her new favourite hobby, at least when everyone with a dick she's not related to is ignoring her. She does it from the window of her old bedroom, a pair of battered binoculars slung around her neck. "I know you're there." She mumbles something under her breath that might be 'creepy mouth breather', but I let it go.

"What are you doing?" She gives me a look that says stupidity should be punishable by death. I rephrase. "Why do you watch them?"

"Because I'm bored. What do you want?"

"My shirt back."

She looked down, fingers tripping down the line of buttons sewn into the flannel. "Really?" She looked up through her lashes, all coquettish pout, and totally called my bluff.

I don't say anything because it's humiliating that it has to come to this; pathetic excuses to share a few words, to make her acknowledge my presence without killing me, and that's probably her whole reason for being a thief. "So want to tell me about the neighbors?"

The chair she's got tilted back thunks onto the hardwood, and she shrugs, lights a cigarette, looks out the window, and turns into a statue. I follow her eyes to see Constance and Michael walking down the street. I'm disappointed to see her still alive. You'd think the abomination would make his homicidal tendencies useful and kill her like one of the nanny's fertilizing her rose bushes in the backyard; apparently for stunning blooms nothing beats Dead Mexican.

My neck is still craned to look out the window when I feel her fingers dig into the flesh under the cleft of my jaw and the lit cigarette searing my ear canal as she shoves it in. "Asshole."

She's gone before I can apologize. Again.

* * *

I can hear her in the living room talking to someone, and as I stride in I see harsh pink lines developing on her shoulder where she's clawed her nails at an itch, marring the pale flesh. But what stops me in my tracks is the man standing next to her eye raping her as she gives him her best wide-eyed innocent seductress routine. She smirked at me as she walked out, book clutched in her hand. It's a game to her, and to my dad who's watching her ass as she walks out, but not to me.

When he takes a step to follow her I take a step in front of him, and when we end up in the basement it's eleven years of life, and even more years of afterlife, and Violet that fuels me as I hack him into pieces with the same axe I nearly chopped that bitch in half with to protect her the last time. By the time I'm done I'm drenched in sweat and my pants are soaked in blood and it's patricide at it's most satisfying. I felt good, light, afterwards; at least if I couldn't make progress with Violet I could with my dad. Dr. Harmon would be proud.

I almost skipped to her room, and when I walked in I was halfway through asking her if she was up for a game of chess before I was assaulted by the scent of sex heavy and cloying in the air. She cums watching me while I'm standing too shell-shocked to move in the doorway, taking in the black hair and old-fashioned stockings of the woman she's got between her legs lapping at her pussy like it's the fountain of youth.

She lets out a muffled scream as I slit her throat and kick her body out of the way like the useless fuck puppet she is, smearing blood over my belt and zipper as I work them down and pull Violet's legs apart.

Even if she wasn't sopping wet already she's slick with blood and there's no resistance when I push inside her. "What? You got something you wanted, and I got something I wanted." It's an argument held in whispers and moans, points punctuated by the sharp snap of hips and the digging in of nails.

"What if I hadn't killed Hugo? What then?"

"I've already fucked one rapist, what's one more?" The words are bitter and she spits them in my face.

"Shut up." Her tone and that word off her tongue makes my stomach churn. "I'm not that."

"Yes you are."

"Stop it. Please, Vi." It's a whine that she's heard and I've said too often, and I feel her flinch as my tears drop onto her skin. "I-" She doesn't give me a chance to finish before her tongue slips into my mouth, urging me into action, and it's slipping into old patterns of twining her fingers into mine and her wrapping her legs around me guiding me to the spots she needs me most.

She cums again with her head pressed back in the pillow and the muscles in her neck straining, and as her walls convulse around me it's just too much and it feels a little like Sepukku following her over the edge. "Go away, Tate." It's barely louder than her breath, but it's enough, and I find myself in the basement before I can blink.

* * *

"I hate you." She's in the living room watching the same movie that the son of the current tenants is watching with his girlfriend curled on the couch. The new family won't last any longer than any of the other families, they just won't be staying permanently.

She pats the floor next to her with a smile quirking up her lips, and I sit down, throwing an arm around her shoulders as she nuzzles her face against my neck. "I hate you too." She says in tones dripping with sweetness because it's our _I love you_ now. "Still think you'll wait forever?"

"Yes." I force the words out through gritted teeth and turn my attention to the couple on the couch, watching how he whispers things in her ear making her laugh. They become too lost in their own little world half-way through the movie to notice it, and I'm not sure if it's jealousy or pity burning in my stomach as I watch them.

"They're not like us, or I guess we were never like them." She says, breaking into my thoughts.

"Yes we were."

"Yeah, well I hardly think his dirty little secrets include being a mass murderer and raping her mother."

"Fuck you. You know you could have raped and killed every member of my family and I wouldn't have held it against you. Shit, I don't hold it against you that you've whored around with half the house. I don't even hold it against you that you told me to 'go away'. You know why? Because I fucking love you, and I hate that you don't love me enough to forgive the bad shit I've done like I've done with you because that's what love is: forgiving someone's flaws and mistakes."

She's still got her arm wrapped around my waist and her face nuzzled against my neck, and I have the fleeting desire to push her away from me, but it's gone in an instant because it's like Christmas getting to hold her like this. She waited until my breathing steadied to speak again, and when she did it was in a strained whisper. "I hate this."

She's already got tears in her eyes that she tries to hide as she walks away, pulling her hand free from mine as I try to keep her with me.

* * *

The house was empty by the time Halloween arrived; the latest tenants not even lasting until Fall.

I was curious where she went every year; she'd never leave before sunset and when she stumbled into the house at sunrise it was usually all she could manage to drag herself to some quiet corner of the house and slit her wrists so she didn't have to deal with the after-effects of whatever she'd put in her system overnight.

This year I followed her.

She ended up in a shitty neighborhood joining a crowd of thousands as they made their way into one of the smaller sports stadiums. As soon as we were inside I could hear the rhythmic thumping base lines like the beating heart of some giant unseen beast; could feel the excitement of the crowd manifest and fill the tiny spaces between the bodies pressed together.

She ducked into a bathroom and I leaned against the wall waiting, trying to relax against the panic of being surrounded by so many people. When she reappeared she walked up and without a word opened her hand to offer me a small pill decorated with a happy face, more Alice in Wonderland than any of the teenaged girls in the lingerie-store approximation of it prancing around. I dry-swallowed it before I even asked what was.

"Ecstasy." She answered simply, adding neither explanation nor illumination.

"What's it going to do?"

"Depends. If it's MDMA and not god-knows-what then you'll feel pretty euphoric for a while, like everything is great; no anxiety or fear or anger. It's kind of an upper like coke, but not as intense."

"If it's not?"

"Kill yourself. It's better than being sick as shit all night or accidentally overdosing. Last year I woke up in a body bag when I got a bad dose. Sucked."

"Great. So I'm either going to turn into a Care Bear or die. Wonderful."

"Maybe you should have asked what it was before you took it."

I scowled at her. "Do you always come here?"

"Yeah."

"Why?" I watched a half dozen cops walk through the hallway and had to resist the urge to disappear.

"Ask me again in a couple of hours." She said distractedly as her eyes followed mine. "Don't worry, no one will notice you, and definitely not them. They don't get involved unless someone's openly doing drugs or getting in a fight."

A half hour later I could feel it coming on, the creeping sense of contentment, warming up all those forgotten parts Violet used to before our lives turned into such a shit show. I was probably smiling like an idiot as she led me through the crowd towards the front where a DJ was working furiously at a set of decks, but the feel of her hand in mine was sending jolts of pleasure through me and I couldn't help it.

I let it roll through me, let it carry me along, and for the first time alive or dead, I didn't feel so different, or separate, or alone. I finally got it, why she came here, why she liked this high. She could forget she's dead for a little while and just _be_, and not have to deal with what remembering means. I could feel it peak in my veins and suddenly it was unbearable, the infinitesimal separation between our bodies as she was pressed against me. I needed more. I needed to feel her skin, to feel inside of her, but even that seemed insufficient; I wanted to melt into her body, to become a part of her.

She let me pull her from the crowd, guide her invisibly past security guards trying to stop people from doing exactly what we were doing. Her hands were already fumbling at my belt when I pulled her down on top of me on the grimy floor, lips and tongues and fingers finding patches of bare flesh to kiss and caress. "I love you... so much." I was sure I had never loved her more than I did in this moment, with her hands pushed up under my shirt feeling my heart beat for her, and my hands in her hair, cradling her face to mine. The irony that we could only let go and really be together while totally fucked up wasn't lost, but it didn't matter either.

I could feel the tears leaking out the corners of my eyes as her cunt enveloped me because it was too much feeling her plush and wet around me, feeling the beating of her heart through her. She'd always been the little dancing flame at the center of my world since I first saw her and behind the red canvas of my eyelids I could feel her flare white hot and bright, blotting out everything else. She feels like home and I never want to feel anything else. I keep her wrapped in my arms, holding her as close as I could as our hips rocked and thrust, only half-aware of the words tumbling past my lips into her ear.

She sounded like a wounded animal when she came, her breath shallow and erratic like she might hyperventilate, and I could feel everything that's happened blur, shift, and shatter. It doesn't mean anything, it never did, because this is the only real thing, and if I have to spend forever without her I'd die piece by piece, until one day I wouldn't even be a memory to the eternal inhabitants of Murder House. She shivered and shook against me, her face contorted like she was feeling the most euphoric pain, and as her body pulled me along over the edge with her time and space twisted, warped, and collapsed in on itself.

Her walls were still twitching around me, breath rough, and fingers clutching at me like I'm the only thing tying her to life when I feel the wetness from her eyes washing the sweat from my skin. I kiss away her tears and they're salty and bitter like they contain all the pain she has inside of her. I let her cry because she needs it, because she's been holding it in for too long, and I cry with her.

Somewhere in the back of my brain I know it's the drugs amplifying everything, but it's all there and latent anyway. I love her and she loves me and we need each other like we need to breath. I don't need to hear her say it because I can feel it radiating out from her, and even if we go back to hurting each other tomorrow that love will always be there, and one day it will stop hurting and just be this, forever.

We stayed on that grimy, sticky floor until the music stopped and the nauseating pull of the house drove us to our feet to stumble home. I kissed the palms of her hands, the scars on her wrists, and lastly her lips before I slit her wrists and then mine.

She was awake, her back to me, fingers gripped around the edge of the bed, when I woke that afternoon.

"I hate this."

"Me too."

"I don't want to be like my parents."

I was so thrown by the non-sequitur I couldn't help my stupid response. "Huh?"

"My mom. She took my dad back after he cheated on her, and he just keeps hurting her. I never wanted to be weak like that; I resented her for it, and now I'm no better."

"It's different, Vi." I felt fear circling, ready to strike. "No matter how long forever is, I promise I won't hurt you again." I sat up behind her, pushing aside her hair to kiss the nape of her neck, willing her to believe my trite words.

"No, it's not. We do it all the time." She walked out.

* * *

She was in the bathtub, the smoke from her cigarette mingling with the steam in the air creating a thick miasma. It was the first time she'd called me to her in... well, ever. I could feel my heart thrashing against my ribs as I stood a few feet away from her.

She didn't look at me. "You said you'd stay away from me if that's what I wanted because you care about my feelings more than yours. If I don't have sex with anyone else will you leave me alone? I mean really leave me alone, and not just follow me around invisible?"

"For how long?" She looked over and I saw the tears glazing her cheeks. Forever. She wanted forever. She didn't need to say it. "No."

She sat up, wrapping her arms around her legs and burying her face in her knees. She looked so small, so broken, and exhausted; I don't think I'd ever seen her look so completely drained. "Please, Tate."

I knelled down next to the tub, reaching a hand out to touch her shoulder; she flinched away like it was something disgusting, something that made her stomach churn at the thought of. "Please don't ask me for this, Vi." My throat was painfully constricted, my mind racing with words, pleas, half-formed and feverishly incoherent.

"I don't want to be here. I wish I had died, really died when I took those pills, and not been trapped here. I shouldn't even be a memory to anyone alive anymore." I reached my hand out again, and this time she allowed it, but she was just gone, some place I couldn't reach her with words, and she felt more like a ghost is imagined to than the warm soft girl she should feel like.

"Maybe we'll get lucky and someone will tear the house down, or burn it down and then we'll all just disappear; maybe forever won't be that long because I hate this. I hate being stuck here, loving you and hurting you and not being able to have you. The whole fucked up mess, I just hate it and I don't want to deal with it anymore."

"I love you." It came out broken and quavering, the words scratching my throat raw on their way out. "Look at me." She raised her head slowly, finally lifting her lids to look up at me. They held no light in their depths, just flat, glassy dead eyes. "We don't have to be this way, Vi."

"I know. I just _can't_... no matter how much I want it something in me won't let it happen."

I rested my hand on the back of her head. "Is this what you want, really?" She closed her eyes and nodded.

I wanted to be angry at her, after everything we were back to this, but I couldn't find it in me. My tongue felt thick and heavy, swollen, inside my mouth and unable to form words. I pressed a kiss into her forehead, and left her there.

* * *

I could hear her, somewhere off behind me. The familiar broken sobs. However long I'd been down here - months probably if I really tried to mark time - she was crying. A constant soundtrack as I traced down the blood blue line of vein from elbow to wrist again, splitting it open.

It resealed before my eyes. Perfect smooth skin down to the scars I'd died with. No matter how deeply I dug the blade in, it healed. No matter how many times I cut, it healed.

And that stupid bitch never stopped crying. Her voice raised to a pitiful wail, echoing around the stone confines, reaching a crescendo with a pathetic, warbled _where's my baby?_ The old white rocker clattered to the floor as I shot out of it, Thaddeus and Lorraine's little girls scurrying for cover as I searched the source of the voice, hurling an old brass lamp at her head when I found her. It landed with a sickening smack, knocking her to the ground. Her eyes were wild with fear and shock as I flipped her over and fitted my fingers around her fragile throat. "Where's my baby?" I mocked back at her.

"Tate?" Her voice was weak and raspy and more of a croak than anything else, and I smiled down at her because even though she'd forget it in five minutes I wanted her to know it was me killing her. "Where's the baby you made me?" Her eyes were swimming in tears, tracking down the sides of her face as my fingers tightened convulsively at her words.

"I hate you! You were always the mother I wanted Nora, and you don't give a shit, do you? Look at what you did to your husband. Look at what you did to Thaddeus, to me. This whole fucked up hell is your fault. You can't touch someone's life without destroying everything good in it, and you don't give a shit about anyone but yourself; about anything other than what you want." She flailed and finally stilled; lips blue, eyes stained red with blood as I screamed at her.

"God, you're so hot when you're like this." Hayden whispered from the doorway, voice heavy with lust and malice. She sat down behind me on top of the dead woman and pressed herself against me.

"What do you want?" I managed through clenched teeth.

"Hmmm..." Her hand trailed over the front of my jeans. "to fuck." I almost vomited at the thought of it.

"Go find Ben." I spat, and pushed her off hard enough to make her head crack against the cement floor.

"How many more ways is she going to break your heart before you finally get it?" She shrieked.

Before I could say anything we both heard it, the unmistakable sound of a gunshot ringing through the air close by, and then the hysterical cries of a woman. There were footsteps and shouting above us as people ran outside, Hayden forgetting about our argument and joining them. I came out of the shadows in the attic, not wanting to run into Violet.

I looked out onto the yard from the window and saw Constance screaming over the bloody body of a child in her yard. I didn't feel anything about it; he wasn't mine, I was just a sperm donor. If I was going to get sentimental I should cry over every time I jerked off into a pair of Violet's panties. My eyes roamed over the people gathered on our side of the fence until a flicker of movement on top of the garage caught my attention. She had chosen her spot well. The shot was close, maybe fifteen feet, and she was hidden by tall shrubs from people on the ground on our side.

"What do you think you're doing?" I asked as I sat down next to her. She still had the rifle held loosely in her hand.

"Experimenting." She was shaking with the adrenalin running through her system. "I wanted to know if he could die." The others were drifting back into the house one by one.

"Well he looks pretty dead." He wasn't moving and Constance hadn't tried to throw him over the fence in a last ditch effort to save him, so I could only deduce that her shot had been fatal. "When did you learn to shoot? And where did you get the gun?" I pulled it gently from her hands; it was a weight I missed.

"Moira taught me with your old BB gun." I smiled at the memory of stalking empty soda cans around the back yard pretending to be Davy Crockett. "Anyway, that one Moira found years ago. She kept it."

"Did she know what you were going to do with it?"

"Yeah. She's the only one though."

"Why?"

"I'm pretty sure my parents would have freaked out if I killed him, even if he's the antichrist, and even if he's my half brother and your son via rape. They're pretty old fashioned about killing kids." She muttered it, not meeting my eyes the whole time, and I knew she was lying. I felt a sick sense of fear rising up inside of me and I couldn't understand why.

"And if you hadn't killed him?"

"Didn't." She said with her eyes locked on the scene in the neighboring yard.

"What?"

"Didn't kill him." She pointed over the fence where he was twitching and Constance's wails of despair were turning to ones of joy. "Well that's good to know." She said simply.

She seemed to relax. She stretched her legs out and lit a cigarette, watching as his movements became more pronounced, until he finally sat up as Constance fussed over him. "Go inside Violet." She looked at me defiantly and I grabbed her hand to pull her down off the roof. "Come on. We're going inside." Her hand was slick with sweat and slipped from mine easily.

"Go ahead. I'm staying out here." I was about to drag her forcefully into the house because we didn't have time for this shit when a tight smile lit up her face. The blond haired boy was sitting up and glaring at her, looking murderous. She waved, flipped him off, then disappeared, immediately reappearing on our side of the fence directly opposite him.

I scrambled down and nearly tackled her. "What are you doing?" I hissed in her ear. "Go inside. Now." She laughed and fought against me. For the first time in my life I felt real, palpable fear because I didn't know what he was capable of doing if she couldn't kill him, and she didn't care. "Please, Vi. Please go inside." I begged her and she stilled, looking up at me with wet eyes.

"No, Tate." Her voice was soft and sad, but unyielding. "I don't want to be here." Her eyes flicked away from mine and her voice with falsely blithe when she spoke. "Hey kid. How are you feeling?" I heard him clambering over the fence and felt the waves of hate pulsing off of him as she approached us.

He didn't say anything, just stood and watched, his blue eyes cold, but more knowing than any ten year old's had a right to be. She moved towards him and I redoubled my grip on her. I wasn't sure if the house would be strong enough to keep her alive if he killed her and the idea of being without her was nearly crippling. The tears came, thick and viscous, as I frantically whispered in her ear. "Don't leave me. I need you, Violet. I love you. I don't care what it takes, whatever you need to be happy here I'll do it. I can't survive without you."

She stretched up on her toes. "Me either. That's why I'm doing this. I love you, Tate. I'm sorry for everything." Her voice was so tender, so full of love, that all I could do was clutch at her as she kissed me.

"Go away daddy." His voice, clear and emotionless, rang in my ears as I found myself in the house. I ran to the nearest door, trying to wrench it open, but it wouldn't give. I was scrabbling at the latch on one of the windows when I saw him stab her and her crumple to the ground. There was screaming somewhere in the house as he kept plunging the knife in. She didn't fight if she was still alive after the first blow, and he didn't stop until he seemed to bore of it and Constance helped him back over the fence.

As soon as he crossed the property line the house no longer held me prisoner. I ran out, collapsing next to her, pulling her onto my lap. "Come on Violet. Wake up. Wake up!" I was screaming, crying, shaking, praying. Vivien appeared and threw herself over Violet's chest, sobbing, Ben trying to pull her away. Moira was next, and I rounded on her. "What the fuck were you thinking? Why did you help her?"

"Please come back to me." I muttered it, cried it, begged it a thousand times as I sat there shaking and my tears washed her skin of blood. My fingers searched for any sign of life and found none. I was only vaguely aware of shouted argument between Ben and Moira raging behind me. When I finally looked up it was to see Constance watching, before I could plead for her to send that thing back over to finish me off too she turned on her heel and disappeared into her house.

I'd just have to wait until Halloween, then. I leaned down, kissing her lips, making a promise. "I'll find you."

* * *

**A/N: **My thing with Michael is that since he's borne of the house/tate he has some of the same qualities, sort of like how you can have a parents eye or hair color. But that's not to say he can't die; maybe, maybe not. Maybe the way that Violet tried was just not the right way. On the other hand, if Billie-Dean is right then he's more than the house (I have to say i found the whole story line ridiculous, but whatever), so he might be able to kill the inhabitants if it's possible.

Anyway, I have been dying to use the term "fuck puppet" for like ever. Well ever since I read it in Christopher Moore's _A Dirty Job_ because that's really how I see both the Dahlia's. Having read TheDevotchka's _The Noble War_ I'm totally convinced that Tate was unable to perform on Halloween because he was so traumatized by his experience with Vivien, so to me it's like cannon now. Mystery solved! Anyway, I did ignore the downsides of taking Ecstasy; I kinda just let them experience the upside of that drug. Reviews are always appreciated :)

**Fic Rec's:**

If you have not read the amazing _Iris_ by shootingstella read it immediately. It blew me away, and I could fangirl over it like a lot. Brilliant explanation for why Michael has blue eyes and not brown/black ones like Tate. I eagerly look forward to each update.

Also _The Curve of Her Lips_ by Scarlettwoman710 and ohyellowbird, which I think we're all reading anyway, but is something I'm totally addicted to and their writing makes me green with envy. And I have to say please, please, please don't end it after the 8th. chapter.

And lastly _100_ by Captivation. Another wonderful AU of an older Tate/younger Violet that I'd love to see another chapter of.


	2. Thieves Like Us

"We have to move her." Moira said from somewhere behind me. It was dark and she was still in my lap, completely lifeless as I ran my fingers through her hair. The time she should have healed long since passed.

"Don't talk to me." My voice was hollow, and even as it rang in my own ears it sounded foreign, dead. I should have been thinking of a thousand heinous ways to kill her before Halloween rolled around. I should have been thinking of ways to make her suffer and regret. But I couldn't. I couldn't find it in me to give a shit right now about anything.

The idea that I could ever muster enough energy to care about anything ever again seemed farcical. I felt empty and completely alone, and it hurt more than anything else had hurt in the last few hours; the empty spaces where the parts of me she took with her used to reside aching and throbbing and stinging around the edges.

I picked Violet up and carried her into the house ignoring blur of faces crowding the hallway, only registering Vivien crying somewhere with detached recognition because she sounded like Violet when she cried. I left them all standing there as I made my way to Violet's room, laying her out on the bed and curling around her, the scent of lilac shampoo and rusty blood sharp in my nose.

I was so tired. I didn't think I'd ever felt so exhausted, so drained in all my life. I felt like I could sink down into the mattress and sleep for a hundred years if I just closed my eyes. There was a soft tap at the door, and fear froze me in place; they were coming to take her away from me, I was sure of it. Vivien entered quietly and pulled a chair over to sit next to the bed, extending a hand to take one of Violet's in it. Her clothing was still stained with blood and her face was red and blotchy from crying. "Are you going to take her away from me?"

"No."

"Thank you." I closed my eyes, pressing my face against Violet as I cupped her cheek, rubbing my thumb across her skin.

Her voice was on the verge of tears when she spoke again. "You loved her didn't you?" I looked up at her. "It's hard for me to understand how you could love anyone because of what you did. Ben thinks you can't; he thinks you're a psychopath, which makes you incapable of love. But you loved her." She nodded to Violet.

"Love her." I said harshly. "I love her, not_ loved_ her. I'll die too; maybe if there's anything after this we can be together, but even if there's nothing it's better than being here without her." _Romeo and Juliet, how poetic_ I thought scathingly.

She was quiet for a long time, whether mulling over my words or grieving over her daughter I didn't really know or care. "You're not so unlike Thaddeus are you? Your parents both made you into monsters." I didn't say anything, just closed my eyes and hoped they'd never open again.

I woke to Ben and Vivien's voices, and at first I couldn't understand why they'd be talking next to the bed while Violet and I slept, but then everything clicked into place, and I felt a fresh wave of pain as my heart broke again. It was so easy to think she was alive. It was so easy because she wasn't cold, and she wasn't stiff, and she wasn't pallid, and if not for the ripped and blood stained clothing covering her and the lack of pulse she could so easily be sleeping.

"What do you think is going to happen to her?" Vivien asked Ben as I sat up. His answer was cold and clinical, and I wondered if being that way was the only way he could keep it together because he looked rough, even in the dim dawn light filtering through the curtains.

"She could get better right?" My voice sounded childlike and naive even to me, and I scrambled to justify it to their pitying eyes. "I mean she's not cold and stiff like a corpse should be, so maybe she could get better."

"If she was going to get better she would have by now, Tate." Ben said sympathetically. "She's got none of the markers of life that we retain. Her body may not be decaying like a human body would, but there's nothing there; she's gone."

His words had me on my feet before I even realized I was doing it. "Has anyone checked the basement? Maybe it's like the first time she died. Her body was empty, but she came back, and when we do it's usually in the basement, right? So has anyone checked?" I was vibrating on the spot, and when neither of them answered I dropped to the basement. "Violet!" My voice echoed harshly around the stone confines of the room.

I turned, raking the room with my eyes, looking for her. "Violet!" My footsteps slapping against the floor echoed as I raced around the maze of rooms. "Damn it Violet, come out!" I screamed, feeling anger course through me at her stupid little game; I'd drag her out of her hiding place by her hair if I had to. I swung around to check the crawlspace and collided with Ben.

"I waited here all night. Nothing." Ben's voice broke on the last word, and he bowed his head, brushing away tears.

"Very funny Violet. Come out, come out wherever you are!" I shrieked at the crawlspace door, positive that if I opened it she'd be sitting there smoking and smiling like a smart-ass.

"She's not there Tate!" We glared at each other, each breathing hard before I felt what little hope I had in me drain out my feet, and the pain of loss almost dropped me to the floor. "We should bury her. Have a proper funeral for her, and bury her." He said distractedly.

"No." My voice was unequivocal; she wasn't going into a hole in the backyard like some dead pet. She wasn't going someplace I couldn't even see her.

"I just want to give her something with a little more dignity than being unceremoniously dumped in the crawl space." He snapped.

"I was trying to protect her."

"Yeah well you did a bang up job with that didn't you!"

"Hey, Father of the Year, I'm not the one who didn't notice she was dead for almost a month."

The aloof, controlled facade he usually wore dropped from his face with a punch to my gut, knocking the air out of me and doubling me over before the next blow landed, breaking my nose and knocking me to the floor. The room was filled with the sounds of grunts and ragged breaths and the flat smacking sounds of fists meeting flesh as we writhed beating away the pain of loss until we were both so spent all we could do was kick weakly at each other as we bled and bruised on the floor.

* * *

After the pain came the bitter anger, aided and abetted by a cheap bottle of whiskey and one too many sad songs on repeat. If she woke up now and saw me sitting cross-legged next to her clutching the bottle like a life preserver she'd smirk at me like she knew she'd won; her features would twist up in victory from knowing how much pain she'd caused me.

So I sat, letting the anger burn and simmer like the whiskey down my throat, in my stomach, wondering how I was ever so stupid to give her pieces of myself for safe-keeping when all she did was abandon them like child bored with their once favourite toy. I thought of all the ways I would hurt her for this when she woke up because I couldn't even think of the alternative. The door banged open behind me, and Chad and Moira walked in. "What do you two want?" I growled.

"What do you think?" Chad snapped, dropping into the chair that was Vivien's usual haunt. "We're here for the same reason you are."

I let out a mirthless chuckle. "Yeah, like you give a shit that she's dead. It just gave you a way to get out."

"I think that was directed at you Jezebel." Chad said bitchily as Moira scowled silently next to him. "Whatever, do you mind giving a us a few minutes alone?"

"What are you going to do?" I didn't trust them, or anyone really, with her. Ben and Vivien kept talking about burying her like it was the right thing to do, and Dr. Charles kept offering to turn her into Thaddeus. When he was shot down by her parents he came to me, saying that if I could lure Constance over here we could put her heart into Vi. He really didn't see it coming when I threw him out the window head first. Maybe if we could find a heart other than Constance's, but there was no way I would defile Vi that way.

He held his hands up in surrender. "Nothing." I glared at him. "Take a few minutes outside, get some fresh air, take a shower or something." He looked down pointedly at my arms, still covered in Violet's blood. "You haven't left since you checked the basement, and I know why, but she was my friend too." His bitchy veneer dropping for once. "I won't let anyone do anything to her."

"Fine." I disappeared, coming out in the Portico, sitting in the same arch, in the same spot where I had with Violet a lifetime ago when her dad caught her smoking. There was a thick deadening fog hanging in the air and any other time I would have revealed in it. I would have sat out here all night feeling each drop of water suspended in the air prickle my skin and imagined a future where Violet was out here with me. Instead all I had was a cheap bottle of whiskey and nothing else.

I didn't hear her come up behind me, just felt her fingers, cold, tracing up my back under my shirt making me recoil. "What is it with you and men that don't want you?"

"I like the challenge."

"Like being thrown away like a cum rag afterwards?" I offered.

I felt her nails bite into my skin. "She's dead. What does it matter anymore?" She hissed.

There it was, sharp and honest. She was never waking up. It didn't matter. When she was alive fucking Hayden would be the final nail in the coffin, the one thing that tipped the scale and would have put her forever out of my reach because I'd so spectacularly crossed the don't-fuck-other-people line the first time. Now though, it didn't matter, because the only place that I was fucking Violet was in my head and the prospect of forgetting my worries between Hayden's thighs was better than being nailed to this cross.

I slid down from the arch, cuffing her waist with my hands, pushing her into the brick and my lips against hers; lips that were harsh and scaly, and when she forced her tongue in my mouth I half expected it to be forked. I knew as soon as her lips touched mine this was pointless; she would never be who I wanted. Her lips would always be hard and bitter, and she'd never put a small, warm hand on my cheek as she kissed me like Violet had; never fold into my chest like it was her safe haven like Violet had. She'd never be the one; the one I got lost in the, the one I could push the world away with.

Even if she wasn't a bitter, angry harpy, she'd never fill that hole in my heart where Violet lived; no one would, because the cruelest thing Violet ever did to me was make me love her. I pulled away and wiped my lips across my sleeve trying to remove any evidence of my betrayal before I left her there hissing like a pissed off animal.

Chad was alone when I walked back in, quickly glancing over Violet's prone form to make sure she was just as I'd left her, the disgust at what happened outside roiled in my stomach, clawing its way up my throat in a mess angry words, an errant 'bitch' pushing its way past everything else and out my lips.

I took a pull from the bottle, trying to wash the rest down before they exploded out of my mouth, forgetting for a moment that Chad was there before he made himself known with a sarcastic, disbelieving noise in his throat. "Shut up. Just shut up."

"What are you so pissed off at her for?"

"After all the times she hurt me you're asking me that? Why did she even do it? I mean, we all knew she'd come back."

"Maybe she liked hurting you. Maybe she thought if she hurt you enough you'd finally stop loving her, and then you'd leave her alone. Maybe she wanted to see if she could be as bad as you. Maybe she wanted to see if you were really the monster you were in her head." He finished with an irritated huff.

I felt my anger shrivel at his words and sat down hard on the floor. I picked at the frayed edge of my jeans, contemplated the half empty bottle held in my hand, tried to blot out the kiss with Hayden, tried to ignore his litany, and failed. "Is that really why?"

Chad scoffed. "No."

"Then why?"

"Because you kept upping the stakes. Kept inflicting new wounds before the old ones could heal, and hurting you was better than hurting herself because she wasn't the one who deserved to be hurting. She hated it, but she hated being tortured with the knowledge that Vivien enjoyed it, that she'd never have kids, more. But you're the man of action aren't you? Killing, raping, hurting... if there's a problem you try to fix it in the worst way."

"Then what should I have done, huh?" The anger rising once again. "I didn't see you seeking me out to tell me how to fix things or make her happy, or shit, just telling me to back the fuck off because she was your friend and I was hurting her after all the times you two spilled your guts to each other over a bottle of wine." My voice rising with my anger. "So tell, what the fuck should I have done here, Chad?"

"You should have stayed the hell away from her, like she wanted you to from the start, and not after she had to beg you for it because by then it was too little too late. You should have waited for her to come to you when she was ready, and when she was you should have showed her that you still loved her, and given her a reason to trust you not to break her heart. _Again_. Because whatever slights she inflicted on you were nothing compared to how you betrayed her. Your heart may have pieces missing, but hers was shattered, so don't sit there and act like a victim. You're not." He stomped out, slamming the door behind him.

I kept up my lonely vigil all night. The alcohol flipping my anger for crushing grief and regret at some point. It was Vivien who broke the news to me that they'd bury her the day after at sunset. I just nodded and sat down on the bed, taking Violet's hand in mine and holding it until we were alone again and I could press it against my face and let the tears I was holding in cascade down my cheeks. I couldn't stop them, and she wasn't coming back.

* * *

"I never thought I'd have to do this." My voice was muffled by my hands covering my face as I sat next to Vi on the bad, Chad standing somewhere behind me waiting for me to move so that he and Vivien could get her ready for burial.

I'd spent the night with her, alone, and I felt her slipping through my fingers a little at a time as each minute ticked by. In an hour all I'd have is memories of those gift months spent together before everything turned sour and spoiled; of those weeks spent in her bedroom and the attic after she died exploring her body; of halloween.

I'd almost begged Ben and Vivien to bury me with her because Halloween seemed so far away. I fleetingly thought about whisking her down to the basement to Dr. Charles, taking him up on the offer to repeat his life's finest achievement, of somehow luring someone who wasn't Constance here so we could put their heart inside Vi and she'd live again. Desperate thoughts of a desperate man because whatever asshole coined the phrase _It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all_ didn't know dick about love; no one who ever felt this would say that.

"You can stay if you want." He offered, but I shook my head. If I had to stay and watch it would become horribly real in a way I'd been hiding from since it happened.

"Can I just have a minute?"

I waited until I heard the door close softly behind him to crawl forward and cradle her face in my hands, trying to burn into my brain how her skin felt against my fingers; the way her hair fell through them; all the delicate tones tinting her porcelain skin because she was still perfect and it wasn't making this easier. I didn't say anything because I couldn't find the words; there were none. Instead I kissed her hard and forced myself from the room. Vivien and Chad were waiting in the hall when I walked out, shoulders heaving and head bowed, to take refuge in the attic.

Beau had slouched over to meet me when I sat down on the dusty floor, the little window overlooking the yard morbidly pulling my gaze towards it. I knew if I looked out of it I'd see the hole Ben and Patrick had dug; would see her buried in it. I wasn't going to be there; my strength only extended so far as leaving her bedroom and hiding up here.

He sat watching me sadly and rolled the ball only halfheartedly a few times before asking about Violet as best as he could. I was too lost trying to find a way to explain it to him to wonder how he knew anything was wrong with her. In the end I settled on 'she's sick', and he looked at me blankly for a moment before crawling over to a dark corner and rummaging around until he came back holding something in his hand. "For... for Vi... Violet." He stuttered, opening his hand to reveal an old tarnished ring set with a dark stone the size of a marble cut in half; a beautiful trinket left from some forgotten resident who got away with her life, but not her possessions.

"I'll go give this to her, okay? I'm sure she'll love it." I descended the rickety stairs with a sniff and cough, and was almost knocked over by Chad as he quickly walked down the hallway. I grabbed him. "Am I too late? Beau wanted Vi to have this, but is it too late?" He looked at the ring in my hand and shook his head, pushing me away to continue down the hall. Vivien opened the door and motioned to me. "What...?"

She grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me over to the bed. "Tell me I'm hallucinating."

"What?"

"Look at the wounds." She hissed.

I did. They were scabbed over.

I sat down hard in the chair and started shaking uncontrollably as Vivien paced a frantic circle at the foot of the bed. This couldn't be happening. If she was going to heal she would have. It had been three days, she was gone. I heard footsteps pounding up the stairs, down the hall, into the room. I left, pushing past Chad, Patrick, and Moira when Ben started examining Vi because I couldn't stand it; couldn't stand the hope rising up in my chest.

I paced, endlessly, down to one end of the hall, back to Vi's door, chewing my nail until I tasted blood, my heart thumping away like a jackhammer as the minutes ticked by in silence, trying desperately to tamp down the hope springing up inside of me because I knew how much it would hurt to have it ripped away.

I heard Vivien burst into tears and my heart broke, again, in new ways and shapes because of course she was dead and I was stupid for ever hoping, for ever thinking she'd get better, for ever loving her in the first place. I slinked back in the door, shouldering past the gays to give Violet the ring Beau had gifted her before she was hidden away from me forever.

"Here." I pulled the ring from my pocket where it had been making little dents against my thigh as I paced and presented it to Vivien. "Beau wanted her to have this."

She looked at me, confused. "She's healing." She looked at Ben and back at me. "Tell him." She urged.

"It looks like she's healing, but I don't know what that means. We have to wait and see what happens." I pushed past them, holding my breath as I traced a finger around her scabs.

"She can't be." I said dumbly, not daring to believe it.

"Well, she is." He said with a finality that cut through my disbelief.

I traced the planes of Violet's face with my fingers before leaning into her ear so only she could hear me. "Violet? Vi? I don't know if you can hear me, but if you can please come back." I picked her hand up and kissed it, squeezed it in mine. "Please."

* * *

Violet's sick room turned into a beehive of activity. She would have hated it.

After Ben checked her wounds every morning slowly people would trickle in; first Vivien and the baby, and then Moira, Chad and Patrick. In the afternoon Lorraine's little girls would bring her flowers they'd picked from the yard because Sleeping Beauty was supposed to be surrounded by flowers. There was constantly talking and living and laughing going on around her and I sat in the corner like a foul tempered gargoyle feeling as empty of life as she looked until they slowly filtered out, until it was just me and her again.

Every evening I unbuttoned the flannel of mine that she wore and counted her scars, traced them, kissed them. Every night I'd watch her, lay with her, read to her, put on her favourite music. Anything and everything I could think of that might help her and distract me because this, her being dead, had suddenly and inexplicably become the easy part.

On the good days I thought of Chad's constant strictures to me to 'man up' and fix things. To talk to her and find out what she wanted and needed and give it to her; to make her promises and keep them even if it hurt because that was the only way it wouldn't someday. I'd spend hours framing my apologies until they were just right, like an actor memorizing a script. On those days the future was a happy one because as he said, she still loved me, just didn't think the cycle of fucking and wounding would stop, and all I had to do was change that, not me.

On the bad days the hours spent locked with her were a crucible because there was nothing I could do to fix this. Things were too broken, there was nothing salvageable, and love wasn't enough; our past would forever poison our future. She wanted to die, she wanted to leave me here, and I hated her for it. When she woke up she'd probably descend into hysterics at the prospect of still being here, with me, in this house, forever, and it didn't matter what I said or did because nothing would change that. Those nights there was no reading or talking or music because she was the bitch that ruined my life, and if she woke up she'd just keep ruining it and me.

And even that wasn't the worst. The worst was her not waking up at all, and as the days stretched into weeks, and then into a month and she didn't wake up I would go through the five stages of grief every night because she was never going to wake up. Her cuts had healed into pink, puffed up scarred tissue decorating her chest and abdomen, but her heart still didn't beat, and it never would again.

Ben had been talking about performing CPR the last few days, reasoning that maybe she needed a 'jump start' like a broken down car before she'd work again, but no one had gotten that desperate, mostly because no one wanted to be that wrong. As long as we had hope we had something; if we did it, and it didn't work we'd have nothing.

"I can't believe people read this." I muttered, looking up from the book in my hand to Violet's face. "You would have hated this wouldn't you? Some stupid, sappy bitch swooning over a sparkly vampire who basically just admitted to stalking her? If you knew I watched you sleep when you were alive you would have told me to go fuck myself." I tossed the book to the floor and made a mental note to throw it at Chad the next time I saw him for assuring me she'd love it.

I switched on her iPod and the sad twang of a slide guitar filled the room as I sat back down, playing with her fingers and singing along softly to the lyrics about a woman who leaves the man who loves her and the lengths he goes to keep her when her hand twitched in mine. It felt like an eternity before I could breath again, before my heart stuttered into a sprint. "Vi?" She didn't respond as a mixture of terror and elation seared through my veins while I hovered over her, waiting.

It came on slow; the flush seeping into her cheeks, the warmth spreading through her limbs, the barest hint of breath, and finally another little twitch of her hand in mine. My breathing was so ragged I thought I might hyperventilate and I tried to steady it as I leaned down. "Violet? Can you hear me? Squeeze my hand if you can hear me." When I felt her hand pulse weakly in mine I came undone; laughed, cried, smiled, kissed every inch of her face until she made an irritated noise in the back of her throat, and weakly, tried to pull away.

She seemed to come to life into a deep sleep. Her breathing was slow and steady, and eventually her head lolled to the side, nuzzling into a pillow as she mumbled something. "What? Say it again." I leaned down and put my ear next to her lips as she said 'cold'. "You're cold?" She made a little noise of assent and I laid down, pulling her against me and the thick down comforter over us. I wove my fingers into her hair and pressed her against me as I cried at the soft humid breathes floating across the skin of my neck.

"Why are you crying?" She mumbled, her voice heavy with sleep. "I came back."

"You were dead." I choked out.

"Yeah." She breathed, and drifted off again.

As dawn stretched across the ceiling I kept her wrapped in my arms because I was sure when she woke up she'd tell me to leave her alone, to 'go away'; to never see or speak to her again. It was a slow crawl to gallows and I was drawing out every last second of life because I knew the future beyond those steps held nothing.

When Ben and Vivien entered an hour later she was still resting against me, her arm having crept across my stomach. Their intrusion felt wrong, voyeuristic, and it was only after a harsh and hissed argument that they went back downstairs with ill grace.

She got restless around noon, tossing and turning, until she finally opened her eyes an hour later to see me staring at her. "Hey."

"Hey." The silence that descended was tense and heavy and awkward as we both lay there eyeing each other warily. "You look like hell." She said finally as she reached out apprehensively to stroke my cheek.

"I've been in hell." I said, as I pressed into her hand. So warm. So soft. So missed.

"I know." Her tone was sad and strangely evasive.

I stared at her as she worried her bottom lip before rolling over on my back. "I'm so pissed at you Vi." I said to the ceiling, exhaling a month indefinable, indescribable emotions like stale air as frustration at everything that had happened rose to the surface. "Why did you do it?"

"I told you why." She said shortly, but pressed on when I didn't reply. "You were right; family isn't enough. I wanted you, but I things were - are - so fucked up, and I don't know... I didn't want to turn into Maria; a sad shadow of a girl wandering around like a pathetic broken record mumbling 'look at what he did to me' over and over."

"Things would have changed."

"Yeah, okay."

"They would have." I said firmly, annoyed by her dismissiveness. "Neither of us wanted it to be like this."

"Tate, I'm tired and I'm sore, and I've been dead for three weeks, and right now I just don't want to do this with you." She said wearily, slicing through my anger.

I rolled back over, resting a hand on her hip. "Okay. All I want is for you to listen to me. You don't have to say anything, just listen, okay?" There was apprehension in her eyes, but she acquiesced, allowing me to tell her every detail of events of the last month, every nuance of emotion. Let me tell her all the apologies I had stored up and perfected over that time. She closed her eyes at some point to hide the pain, but the tears still wet her face, and when they did she let me pull her into my chest and keep talking into her ear. She let me repeat my last promise to her: to give her what she needed to be happy here.

But it was just that: she listened. She didn't say anything, and the silence afterward stretched on until her breathing deepened and she fell asleep again. It was dusk when she woke for a second time, sitting up and holding her head like it was throbbing before tottering over to the mirror above the dresser. "Why am I only wearing your shirt and panties? Should you be looking up the local chapter of Necrophiliacs Anonymous for Halloween?" She asked as she started popping the buttons.

I barked out a laugh. "No, it was easier to check your wounds this way. How do you feel?"

"Sore. Three weeks of not moving makes you sore." Her fingers were tracing the scars above her breasts.

"Twenty-seven." She turned to look at me. "There's twenty-seven of them. We thought you were dead, Vi. If your mom hadn't noticed the scars forming they would have buried you."

"Sorry." Her voice was small and contrite, and it might have been the only time I heard her utter that word and mean it as an actual apology.

"How do you know how long you've been dead for?"

"Hmm?"

"You've said it twice, that you've been dead for three weeks. How do you know?"

She made her way over to the window, lighting a cigarette and looking at Constance's house. "I just do."

"Do you want me to go?" She shook her head, finished the cigarette and came back to bed, curling against me. It took her nearly a week before she was normal, or at least functioning in the way she should. The entire time she was quiet; awfully, terribly, quiet. She didn't tell me what she wanted or needed, but she didn't send me away either, and I played along because it was so much better than it had been for years. It wasn't right, or perfect, just better.

When she finally went downstairs to see her parents and everyone else she never strayed far from my hand resting lightly against the small of her back. I could feel how tense her muscles were, how uncomfortable she was with being the center of attention. She served her time; drank a cup of tea, relaxed, briefly, with her brother in her arms, and when she deemed she'd put on her exhibition long enough, retreated back upstairs with me following along like a vestigial limb.

* * *

She was holed up with Chad and Moira and a bottle of wine in the living room with the doors closed, while I played Solitaire in the kitchen, clearly not invited. It was hours later that the door opened and she walked out, sitting down across the table from me, silent for a moment before she spoke. "You need to give Moira break. It wasn't her idea."

I dropped my gaze back to the cards, not wanting her to see how my features hardened. I knew it was irrational and stupid, but I couldn't help but seething silently at Moira every time I saw her for her hand in the anguish I'd felt over the last month. I heard her chair scuff the floor as she got up, and her footsteps fading away up the stairs. I packed up my cards and followed, catching her just as she pulled her shirt off, seeing her fresh scars pink and puckered and spread across her wasn't something I was getting used to.

I sat down on the bed, pulling her with me, and buried my face in her stomach. "I wish those would go away." I said glumly.

"Do you?" I pulled away to look up, and they were gone, perfect smooth flesh was all I could see for a second, and then they were back and she pulled away.

"Do you want to be alone?"

"Chad told me what he told you. He feels guilty for breaking my confidences now that I'm not dead."

"Are you... upset that he told me?"

"It's done, it doesn't matter. I just don't want to talk about it, not with you. It still hurts too much." I could see the muscles straining in her back as she gripped against the dresser fighting emotions I couldn't see with her face turned away from me.

"Why should I ease up on Moira?" The words came out harsher than I intended because, again, she had a hand in this anguish.

I saw Violet relax, like a sprung coil, her movements were easy and natural again. "Because I'm fine, and because she's not going to be here that much longer, so she might as well enjoy it while she can." She smirked at me over her shoulder, taking in my stunned expression before continuing as she pulled a shirt on to sleep in. "This is totally going to mind fuck you."

She rearranged some pillows against the footboard and laid down against them. "You didn't ask me where I went when I died." She said around a cigarette, waiting for me to dig out the lighter I always kept in my pocket for her. "You asked me how I knew I was dead for three weeks." She said around the first puff as if showing a flaw in my logic.

"You didn't die, so you didn't go anywhere."

"Yes, I did. I wasn't here, not until around the time I started to wake up."

"Okay, so where were you? Heaven or Hell?" I was entertaining her, joking with her, because the idea that she was gone and came back was absurd; it didn't work like that.

She scowled. "If it makes it easier just accept that everything I think happened was actually going on inside my head and it's total bullshit; a consensual hallucination of my mind to ease me into death or something. Maybe the dream of someone in a coma, whatever. It felt real to me."

"This is bullshit, Vi. You can't die, the house won't let you, and anyway we don't die because we don't have bodies, not real ones at least."

She smiled at me maddeningly as if I'd fallen into a trap. "That's sort of true. All we are is souls, and you can't usually kill a soul, but He can." She nodded towards Constance's house. "And that's what matters. The body, that's just meat, a vessel, unimportant. When you die it's your soul that moves on; your body just decays. I didn't decay because this isn't flesh, it's soul no matter what it feels like."

"Okay. So where did you go, Heaven or Hell, and how did you come back?"

"Heaven. We all go to Heaven." She was staring at the ceiling puffing perfect little smoke rings, like perverse halos.

"So I'd go to heaven if I died?" I scoffed.

"Eventually." She looked at me. "Maybe." A smile playing on her lips.

"Maybe?"

"Maybe. Not everyone goes directly to Heaven; it's not Monopoly, you don't always pass Go. Some people have to go to purgatory. It's sort of like reincarnation except we're out of the flow of humanity, but still, the soul only ascends." She let out an irritated little huff at my confused expression. "Even though we have a soul we're still human and flawed and we have free-will so we fuck things up. If we die before we can overcome our baser human nature we go to purgatory where we're re-presented with the lessons we didn't learn in life."

"You're stuck there until your soul can ascend again, but the change must be permanent." She trailed off lost in thought for a moment, musing. "I didn't ask, but if we can only ascend it's because our nature has fundamentally changed." Her eyes focused on me again. "Anyway, it really comes down to three things: compassion, humility, and simplicity. But those three things break down in a thousand different ways. So, maybe. You have to overcome your flawed nature to ascend, otherwise you're stuck there indefinitely."

"If the soul can only ascend what about Hell?"

"Dogma."

"What?"

"Dogma. You're too married to the ideas of the afterlife written by flawed humans; justice is a human need. There is no Hell in the afterlife, _the soul only ascends_. The phrase 'Hell on earth', did you ever think of it literally?"

"Yes." She arched an eyebrow questioningly. "I did. You try growing up with Constance." I said irritably.

"My point exactly. This is Hell."

"I'm lost."

"No shit." She scoffed. "This is Hell. Where we live, earth, this is Hell." All I could do was gape at her in disbelief. "What? It's that had to believe? Look at all the awful shit we do to each other, and not even outside these walls. You said it yourself, the world is a filthy place. Well, duh. Welcome to Hell."

"Bullshit."

"You think so? Look around you, Tate. Sometimes we create our own Hell; what would be worse for us than living here and not having each other? Sometimes we're powerless to the Hell others create; war, genocide... fuck, natural disasters. Just because there's moments of happiness doesn't mean anything."

"Exactly, so Hilter's going to Heaven? I find that hard to believe."

"No, you have to have a soul to ascend." She smirked at the look of shock on my face. "Not everyone has a soul. That little abomination next door doesn't. No soul, no ascension. When they die they just die; they're only flesh."

"But you couldn't kill him. How does that work?"

"I just didn't kill him in the right way. He can die. People like that though, they're kind of pure projections of Hell. Demons don't really exist like they do in the Bible, but they're sort of close to it, I guess."

"You guess?"

"Just because I got some answers doesn't mean I got all of them. But people like that, and places like this house, it's an energy that keeps them going. You have to break that. When you do they just die. If we could break the energy of this house it would just be a house like any other."

"So how do we break the energy of this house?"

"No idea." She said, avoiding meeting my eyes by picking at the comforter.

"You're a shitty liar, Vi."

"What does it matter if this is all something my brain cooked up?" She said, annoyance coloring her voice.

We sat glaring at each other, each calling the others bluff because at some point I had started to believe her. I felt that creeping sense of fear, the same as I had when I watched her with the gun in her hand. "You're going to destroy the energy of the house aren't you? That's why Moira's not going to be here much longer, because none of us are."

"Is that what you want?"

"I don't know." I said slowly, turning over the idea. "What would happen? Would we all just disappear?"

"Lost Souls now departing gate 9A." She giggled, betraying for the first time how much wine she'd consumed over the last few hours, and expelling the tension that had descended moments before.

"You came back." I said suddenly.

"What?" She snapped like I'd hit a nerve, which one I had no idea.

"You came back. How does that work?" She relaxed.

"We get a choice. Well unless you die in a place like this house you get a choice, but when you die, before you go to purgatory or heaven, you get a choice. You can stay or come back. If you come back you can ascend when you want to, but once you do you have to stay. All that bullshit about ghosts sticking around because they have 'unfinished business' or whatever... it's sort of true. I imagine those kids you killed just won't move on until they get some answers, but different people, different reasons. You can't move back and forth though; once you die you only have the one chance to come back. So if we died I would have to stay there, but you'd have a choice."

"Why did you come back?"

"Unfinished business." She said vaguely, but there was a hardness to her voice that told me plainly to drop the subject.

"Okay. So these things that break down in a thousand ways, how does that work?"

"Did you ever read the Bible?"

"I thought you said that was the work of flawed humans."

"It is, sort of; divinely inspired, but not guided."

"Huh?"

"Forget it, it's not important. What was Jesus like? I mean what were like, the big defining things?"

"He existed?"

"Fuck, stop getting bogged in unimportant details, just answer the question. God, you're worse than a stupid kid sometimes. I'd have better luck with conversation with Travis."

"Fuck you." I spat and got off the bed, heading for the door, but she grabbed my wrist.

"Sorry, really." I pulled against her, but she wouldn't let go. "Tate?" I forced a breath out my nose. Every time. Every fucking time all it took was her asking and I'd cave. She tugged against me, pulling me down, and I let her, caging her in with my arms. "I'm sorry. I know that still hurts."

I bit back the angry retort on my tongue and tried to smooth things over by getting back to the point. "So... what was it you said? 'Humility, compassion...?"

"Simplicity. That was the toughest one for me." She said offhand.

"Why?"

"Jesus said 'Be like children'. Children have an infinite capacity for faith, for the belief in things not seen or proven. It's tough for me." She shrugged. "Whatever. Think about all the things you've done in your life and afterlife and measure them against those three things."

"So he really existed?"

"Yeah, like Michael in reverse."

"What do you mean?"

"Well he's a pure projection of heaven or whatever; human and God, like Michael in reverse."

"If that was the case the Devil would have raped your mother." I said in a small voice, bracing for the blow that was surely coming for mentioning it.

"Maybe there isn't a _The Devil_, you know? I mean humans have an infinite capacity for cruelty, maybe that's all it is, and it's easier to point to a boogey man than to say we're all evil. Just because Jesus died to atone for our sins, everyone's, all of them, doesn't mean that we were perfected; we're still flawed and human."

I frowned. "Is that all we are? Evil little things that pollute the earth?"

"No because we have free will; we have a choice to be good or bad, and none of us are wholly one or the other."

"Even the soulless?"

She shrugged. "No idea. Like I said, I didn't get all the answers." She was quiet for a long time as her words twisted and spun in my head. Finally she got up, tossing the pillows back where they belong and crawling forward, prodding my arm. "If you're going to stay at least be useful." I lifted it, letting her nuzzle against me, and wrapped it around her protectively.

"What are the good things?"

"Sleep Tate, I need to sleep or I might actually die."

"Not funny Violet." I scowled, but she kissed right over the pulsing vein in my neck and settled herself. "Fine, but this conversation isn't over." Her fingers slipped over my mouth sushing me. I kissed and nipped at them briefly before whispering an 'I love you' into her hair.

"Vi?"

"Hmm?"

"You came back to break the house didn't you?"

"Go to sleep Tate, or at least be quiet so I can."

* * *

**A/N:** Ugh... this was a tough chapter to write. Not that it didn't come easily or anything (it did), but the first half was just damn depressing even though I knew where it was ending up. The second half was fun actually because I got to use a lot of stuff that's been floating around my brain for almost a decade. So surprise, Violet's back. For now. Maybe.

There's one more chapter of this and then I'm going to go back and expand _Beat The Devil's Tattoo_ a little. As always I love you all for reading and reviewing :)

And I do have to recommend _Halloween_ by CharleyLovegood. It's Tate & Stephanie (goth girl from the Dead Breakfast Club) and it's amazing. Maybe no the easiest read for us Violators, but so so well done.


	3. Heart & Soul

**A/N:** Okay, so I know the opening is a little confusing, but trust me, it will all make sense. Also, the last chapter is written from Violet's POV.

* * *

"How long do you think it will take before we know?" He breathed the words out onto my neck and I shivered despite the stifling heat.

"I don't know. I don't know if it has to be ash or what. If it does we'll be here awhile."

I watched the flames through the grate impatiently, toying with the idea of seeing if there was any lighter fluid in the house to speed the process along.

"Violet." Tate's voice was strained and ragged and I turned around, taking in the blood seeping through his layers of shirts before my eyes found his frightened ones as he slumped heavily against the wall and slid down to the floor, leaving a crimson stain in his wake.

I dropped down, cupping his face in my hands. "It's okay." I said softly while his hands clutched at me. He tried to talk but couldn't form the words, his mouth working like a fish out of water while his eyes pleaded with me. It didn't matter, I knew what he was trying to say. "I love you too." He nodded, weakly, and closed his eyes. "I'll wait too." I said to myself because he was gone.

* * *

I was choking, suffocating slowly on his desperation, while I watched him sleep next to me. The sleep of the innocent. He was so perfect when he slept; innocent, and vulnerable, and not trying so damn hard to make me happy it hurt. I focused on his hand; veins stretching across the top, callouses peppering the bottom, and the ever present ring on his thumb. I wondered why he wore it, if it was just something that people did at the time when he was alive; I hadn't seen anyone wear something like it in my time.

In a certain way his hands were grotesque. They weren't smooth and perfect, but they were strong sometimes, capable of pulling triggers and snapping necks. I had never felt those hands. The ones I felt were always safe and gentle, loving. The Halloween when he folded me against his chest and told me everything was okay because he was there was probably the best moment of his life because it was true. He must have swelled up inside and felt happy, truly completely happy, for the first time.

I could have dealt with everything. Being dead, stuck in this fucked up house, never growing up, everything, all of it, if I had him. I didn't think I did, or I guess I couldn't let him have me, whatever, I didn't have him in the way I wanted him because there was too much between us.

I sighed, raking my hands through my hair. We always want what we can't have, and when we get it, we don't want it. Three weeks of coming undone because the one person I actually gave a shit about wasn't there was enough. Not that being here had been better, not for a long time, but even if we were mutilating each other or futilely ignoring each other he was there, and I was happy for it. It felt wrong to be without him, like I'd left something important behind, and the prospect of never seeing him again made the decision painless, no matter what I faced when I came back.

I turned and looked at him, face smooth and eyes closed, looking too peaceful in sleep. On a long enough timeline you learn what really matters to you, right or wrong, it does, and whatever else remains just doesn't hold any weight. Once you stop being angry, and hurt, and jealous, and whatever other clusterfuck of emotions there are, everything that caused it doesn't matter more than the fact that you love the person who did it.

I slipped out from between the sheets carefully. The comfort of his body warm against mine paled in comparison to the stifling atmosphere clinging to him. I had been prepared for him to be angry with me, to have moved on maybe, but not for him to be afraid and desperate. It hurt more than the weeping wounds from everything else he'd done, because being dead for three weeks hadn't fixed that, it just made it matter less.

The night was still inky black and thick with fog outside in the Gazebo. I wrapped a blanket around myself as I sat down, lighting a cigarette. So I could have stayed, drank the Heavenly Kool-Aid and been happy, but I came back because whatever Tate thought there was no way in hell Constance was letting him get anywhere near Michael. That would completely fuck up her retirement plans. She'd want Tate and Beau here when she died, on the property of course, so she could Mamma them for all eternity.

Constance. She would be the tricky part if I needed Michael. Tate too maybe. He was his son after all. I felt my stomach lurch at the thought. Whatever. He hadn't said anything about it, so maybe he wouldn't care. He definitely wouldn't care if I had to kill Constance to get to him, and really who would?

Thaddeus was going to be the easiest part. I still couldn't believe no one had figured it out in all these years; if you knew the history of the house it was so obvious. _Oh yes, Obvious. So obvious Addie had to spell it out for you_. I'd probably need to use the furnace though, the fireplaces wouldn't burn hot enough. I flipped the spent cigarette into the soggy grass and rested my face against my knees.

I felt a jolting wave of panic in my stomach, and after searching for a source realized it wasn't mine. "I didn't mean to wake you up." Nothing but silence met my words. "I hate it when you spy." I said flatly and a moment later heard the floorboards creak behind me.

"You not being there wakes me up better than an alarm going off. What are you doing out here?" His voice was tremulous, full of questions he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answers to as he sat down, wrapping a cautious arm around me. I choked back a sob, tears stinging my eyes, and bolted across the small space. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." He chanted, voice frantic.

"Stop it. Stop apologizing." I grit out. "I hate it. I hate that you're trying so hard."

"I don't know what else to do Vi! I just want you to be happy. I want to be whatever you need to be happy so you won't leave again." He said desperately, and I knew if I turned around and looked at him his eyes would be wrapped in tears.

"I don't need anything. I just need you. Not what you think I want and not the you, you think I need, just you. I don't want you to be someone else; I'm not your mother, I'm not Nora." Because that was it. Thinking that he only loved me so much because I was the one person who never wanted anything from him diminished it, made me feel stupid and naive in the worst ways for coming back. He didn't really love me if that's all it was.

He leaned up against the railing next to me, a study in anxiety. "I know you're not." He said carefully.

I coughed out the thickness building in my throat. "When you found out you were trapped here what did you do?"

He let out a sigh, grateful for the change of subject probably. "The same thing you did. Tried to run away. When that didn't work I tried killing myself. A lot. Tried burning down the house once, Moira was pissed. I don't know; we're still teenagers, you know? I guess it's normal to be rebellious."

I scoffed. "Rebellion is what the losers call revolution." I looked down, needlessly analyzing my fingers just so I didn't have to look at him. "Were you happy?" I asked quietly.

"No, I just stopped caring. When you showed up though, then I was happy."

"Are you happy here still?"

"I'm happy wherever you are." He whispered. "I would have followed you, you know?" He added, his voice full of emotion.

I looked up through the shrubs ringing the yard at Constance's darkened house. "No. No, I don't think so." I said distractedly. "She'd never let him near enough to kill you."

"Is that why you came back?" My eyes snapped to his. "Is it?"

"Does it matter? I came back. Why does it matter if I do know how to break the energy of the house if you have me?"

"Because you're not happy here, not really. Even if everything hadn't gone to shit between us you'd still be looking for a way out." I was startled by his perceptiveness, but I guess a lifetime of head-shrinking will do that to you.

I looked back away. "I just wanted you to have the same choice I did. You know those bumper stickers that say 'Jesus is love'? I never really thought much about them other than to think that they were trite and annoying. But it's true. Just like we twist things around to make our own personalized versions of Hell, we can do the same with that."

"We're all a little bad, but we're all a little good too, you know? When we love each other, when we forgive, when we're compassionate, that's where God is; it's not external, it's internal. Can you believe that? Sometimes though the hardest thing is forgiving yourself." I mused. "It took me a long time to forgive myself for loving you."

I forced myself to meet his eyes, dark and intense and boring into mine, even though I hated how vulnerable it would make me; the fierce little girl, broken by love. "I couldn't wait for Halloween either, does that make me selfish?" What I wanted to do could be selfish. I could be making the decision for a dozen people because I wanted him. It could be compassion, sure, but it wasn't.

I left him standing there and went back to bed before he could answer.

* * *

It was late afternoon when I heard the telltale sounds of a screaming infant wafting down the hallway. With a sigh I stubbed out my cigarette and tossed it out the window just as the door was flung open, and without a word my mom handed the baby over to me and was gone in a whirl of red hair and frustration.

At least she hadn't tried to feed me some bullshit excuse. I paced around, gently bouncing him in my arms and singing along to The Rolling Stones _Wild Horses_ in lieu of a proper lullaby until he quieted. "See that's better. If you hadn't stopped I would have had to smother you, and no one wants that, do they?" The answering chuckle came from where I was sitting before my isolation was infringed upon.

"Do you know your mother is in the master bedroom with her face between Moira's thighs?"

I turned, not lifting my eyes from my brother. "Yeah. That's been going on for a while now."

"Is that why you chose the Dhalia?" I nodded, and sat down on the bed, bunching the blankets to make a little nest and settling my brother in it, keeping a hand on his stomach to soothe him before I finally looked up to see Tate watching me avidly. "What?"

"Nothing." He said hastily. "Since when are you stuck babysitting?"

I shrugged. "All those months you spent in the basement I spent up here, with him." My eyes drifted back my brother. "He was the only person who could just look at me you know? Everybody else... there was always pity or anger or disappointment. And really what else was I supposed to do? You kept your end of the agreement and left me alone; I kept mine and didn't sleep with anyone."

He settled himself opposite me on the bed. "So you never answered my question, about breaking the houses energy?"

I leaned back against the headboard, watching his face closely. "It's complicated." I hedged.

"How?" Before I could answer the baby was screaming again, protesting the momentary lapse in affection, and I picked him up, bouncing him until he quieted once more, and then rocking him until his eyes drooped and he fell asleep. "You're good with him." He said awkwardly, and I grimaced.

"Can I ask you something? Michael, I tried to kill him, does that... I don't know... are you mad at me?"

He looked surprised by the question and shook his head. "No. I don't know him, and I don't care enough to know him. I didn't feel anything different seeing you kill him than I felt killing all the people I've killed, which was nothing at all." His brow furrowed as he looked at the infant cradled in my arms. "You know Hayden was pregnant when she died? Your dad didn't give a shit, about her or the baby. When your mom got pregnant though he was ecstatic."

I shifted uncomfortably, and he dropped his gaze, picking at the frayed edge of his jeans. "I thought it was just because he's such an asshole, and that's part of it I guess, but seeing you with him, I get why he was like that." He sat uncomfortably waiting for my reaction, and I waited for the all too familiar ache inside to die down before I spoke again because at least he'd stopped being so careful with me, and I could at least refrain from ripping his head off.

"It's complicated because I don't know what's going to happen." I said finally. "If I do what I need to do I don't know if we'll all just disappear or what. I know what will happen to him though, sort of anyway."

"He's different from us?"

"He died at birth, and unless you haven't noticed babies are completely self-centered, they're completely at the will of their baser human nature. Not that it's a bad thing, it's survival, but still he didn't get the chance to overcome it, so his soul will end up back in the flow of humanity unlike ours."

"I wonder how old you have to be before you're not recycled."

"Don't know. Look you can't tell anyone about this Tate. No one knows other than you and me about any of it."

"Chad, Moira? Neither of them know?"

"No. They know we can die, and that we have a choice to come back or not, but that's it. Moira's still planning on getting Michael to kill her."

"Why didn't you tell them?"

"Because I don't want anyone stopping me. If my parents knew what would happen to him there's no way they'd let me do it."

"You don't know that." He said reasonably.

"Maybe, but if he was ours how would you feel about it?" I watched his expression turned from contemplative to stricken. "Exactly. No one can know Tate, especially that. The others, they can come back if they want, but he can't."

"I won't tell anyone." He promised with all the solemnity of a little boy making a pinkie-swear. "So if you know what's going to happen to him, what about the rest of us?"

"No idea. Best case we all just disappear; the house may be the only thing holding us here. Or everybody might have to die again. If, when, I'm ready to go back I have to die, but I can slit my wrists or whatever and it will work." I sighed. "But that might just me. Worst case scenario we'll have to get Michael over here to go on a killing spree and if we need him your mother is going to be a big problem."

"Do you know how to kill him?"

"No."

His eyes were intently focused on mine trying to find any concealment or dishonesty before he relaxed, stretching across the bed and propping his head up on his hand. "So what do you have to do about the house?" He might have been asking about the weather, and it was unnerving to see someone be so cavalier about the choice that had been eating away at me for weeks.

"Doesn't it bother you that..." I started, and cut off.

"What?"

"Well I'm not killing them, but it's not much different is it?"

"They can come back if they want?"

"Yeah."

"Then I really don't see the problem. You think too much, and besides you said it yourself, 'no one is happy here'. Well, you're giving them the chance to be happy."

"Because I want you." He smiled beatifically; it made me want to punch him. "Just because my intentions are good doesn't mean I'm doing the right thing." I glared at him, hoping to remind just how familiar he was with that scenario, and to his credit he did duck his face and at least try to look ashamed.

"We could always try to get Michael over here; just for me and Moira and whoever." He said in a small, unconvincing and unconvinced voice.

"No, that's not going to work." I said, defeated. I chewed on my lip, mulling over how to tell him. "The funny thing is, you kinda told me without knowing it. Do you remember the night in the basement with the Ouija board? The story you told me?"

"Yeah." He said, confused.

"Okay, in all your years here have you ever seen any ghost older than Charles and Nora?" He shook his head. "So what was different? They were performing abortions in the basement, but I don't think it was that. I think it was the intent, the reason behind doing it that was the problem; greed is one of the seven deadly sins after all. But I think it's more than that too. They're awful people, maybe not Charles, but Nora? Not exactly Mother Theresa." I laid my brother back down in his nest of blankets now that he was deeply asleep and got up to pace. "But Thaddeus isn't a ghost."

He rolled over to watch me. "I know. He didn't die on the property."

"Yes he did, but there wasn't anything about the house or the property that held his soul here when he died. I don't know the exact mechanics of it, maybe it was just a confluence of events and personalities, but it wasn't until Dr. Charles Frankenstein'd him back to life with a stolen heart, and Nora went just as nuts as Charles that everything went to shit."

"How do you know he died here?"

"I don't, not really. That part could be wrong but I don't think so. If he had died here and the house was already trapping souls we'd see a perfect little one year old Thaddeus running around, not to mention all the babies Charles aborted. Besides if I tried to abduct him" I pointed to my brother "by crawling out the window he'd scream his head off. So I think Thaddeus was killed here and dismembered somewhere else. I think it makes more sense that way."

There was a soft tap at the door, and I whipped around, terrified we might have been overheard. My hand was shaking at I opened it to find my mother looking flushed and happy, ready to take over with the baby again. "He's asleep. I'll bring him down when he wakes up." She looked around me and saw Tate on the bed looking guilty for no reason other than being there and shrugged before going downstairs to find my dad.

I closed the door and looked at it wonderingly for a moment before turning back to Tate. Apparently there's nothing like a suicidal daughter to bring people together. "So that's all interesting, but what does it have to do with anything?"

I rolled my eyes. "Think about it. What happened? What was the pivotal moment where everything changed?"

He flopped back on the bed lost in thought and it wasn't until I was reading several hours later that he shot up and looked at me with wild eyes. "Holy shit." He hissed out. Bingo. I smirked at him.

* * *

The insistent _drip, drip, drip_ of the faucet into the bath water was annoying, but the heat was worse. It normally wasn't this hot in July, or this humid; it was like we'd accidentally moved to Louisiana instead of Los Angeles.

"I wish someone had put in a pool." Tate mumbled, water tinkling off his hands as they smoothed up my arms to my shoulders.

"Wouldn't matter, we'd still be in the tub. You won't let me outside, during daylight hours anyway." I grumbled. It was annoying, our world was so small to begin with and his paranoia about what Michael would do if he saw me made it smaller. His face had held so much pain though the one time we'd argued about it I couldn't refuse him, so we sat in the bathtub, trying to cool off.

His hands slid back down, thumbs grazing across my nipples before settling on my hips, kneading against my flesh. "I'm sorry." I tilted my head away, hiding the smile playing on my lips as he kissed along my neck.

"Don't start something you can't finish." I warned.

"Who said anything about not finishing?" His hands flitted back up, cupping my breasts as his teeth grazed along my shoulder, making me groan. He was killing me. The first few months after I rose like Lazarus had been marked with kisses and cuddles and a creeping pace to the day when he'd finally made me cum around his fingers, but lately that hadn't been enough to quell the ache between my legs.

I was sure it was slow torture, retribution for my transgression of death. Not this time though, not today, because I was going to get my way. I pressed my lips into his shoulder. "Make me cum, Tate." It was a heady whine and I felt his dick spring to life against my back.

His fingers tread the familiar path down my abdomen to press between my thighs firmly as I wound an arm up and around his neck. His fingers teased against me, pressing and stroking, caressing before he dipped them inside of me while I writhed and moaned against him. The heel of his hand pressed against my clit and he worked first one finger, and then a second, in and out, pushing me over the edge even though I craved a more filling and fulfilling part of him.

His rutting against my back brought my focus back to him, and I pulled away, twisting around, and wrapping a hand around his cock, slowly stroking as I left marks on his neck. I kept my fingers lax and gentle, denying him the contact he needed. "I want you to cum inside me. I want to feel it drip down my legs later." I whispered against his ear before nipping at it, making him twitch in my hand.

"Out." He growled, and I smiled, big and wicked, as I clambered out of the tub just far enough for him to tug me down onto the cold, hard tile and cover me with his body.

But we were both stupid and thoughtless and forgetful of the fact that I died a virgin and the only thing I felt was a painful tearing and sting that made tears slip unwillingly from my eyes and a scream from my lips that was barely muffled against his neck. "Jesus, I'm sorry." His voice was contrite, but it didn't make him any less hard and I could tell by the twitch of his hips that he was dying to move again because either way I was still tight and wet and hot around him.

He pulsed experimentally, and I whimpered, digging my nails into his shoulders. "Just... give me a second." I gasped out, trying to force my muscles to relax around him; my aching need giving way to burning pain. He stilled, kissing marks into my neck and causing a fresh wave of wetness to coat him until I urged him back into motion. He was slow and gentle at first, letting the pain fade enough, and it wasn't long before I started to meet his thrusts, to wrap my legs around him to pull him deeper.

"Are you close?" He asked through gritted teeth.

I shook my head. "I can't. There's still an edge of pain."

"Please, Vi." He whined, and I cursed myself for letting him get me off with his fingers because if he hadn't it would have been easier. I slipped a hand between us, rubbing at myself, but it was futile; I could get close, but it was just out of my grasp.

"Can't." I let frustration seep through my voice as I pulled my hand from between us. "Don't worry about it." I added because I could tell he was close as I moved my lips to his, tracing his teeth with my tongue before he came with a sharp exhale into my mouth.

His face was unreadable when he pulled away and sat back on his heels. I could see his throat working as I sat up, suddenly nervous, the silence deafening before he finally spoke. "You came with him."

"What?"

"Travis." And then it all clicked. I had died before I fucked Travis, and even though he had to pop my cherry again, I still came. Tate had been watching. Confusion turned to hurt turned to anger faster than I had time to identify each emotion, and I felt like punching him in the mouth. Instead I got up and used something more effective to inflict pain.

"And no matter how much you like to say you didn't enjoy raping my mother you still came." I shot back, and was back in my bedroom and pulling on clothes before he had a chance to say anything. When I threw the door open he was standing there waiting. I sneered at him and disappeared to the foyer and out the front door.

I never should have come back. This whole thing was totally fucking stupid. I could feel him behind me, watching, as I stomped out the front door and right past the gate, into the street and away from the house. At least not being held here by the house had its benefits. I didn't stop until I got to Westfield, and collapsed onto the bleachers, raking my fingers through my hair in irritation.

I knew Tate would be losing it back at the house but I just couldn't find it in myself to give a shit about his fragile male ego. I froze as a group of teenagers walked so close to me they almost knocked into me, completely oblivious to my presence. I knew I could leave the house, but apparently I was like an actual ghost, invisible.

I got up and walked to the nearest bus stop, slipping on-board so closely behind a fat man dripping in sweat I could almost taste it. As I watched the buildings go by I tried to ignore the angry voices in my head telling me that Tate and I had done too much damage to each other to love each other anymore, or maybe the only thing we knew how to do anymore was hurt each other.

By the time I got to the Griffith Observatory the fourth of July fireworks were just starting. I watched as they burst and shimmered over the valley below me, swinging my legs as I sat on the ledge of the observation deck crowded with people oooing and awing in time with each technicolor bloom.

When the crowds finally cleared and the air only carried the occasional distant pop and hiss of people lighting of smaller fireworks in their yards the thoughts I was trying to ignore came back. I didn't know when everything had changed, when we'd stopped being horrible to everyone else, and focused on each other. There was no one day, one event, it just happened as I got angry and he got bitter; over time it got to be our normal.

Maybe we had done it for so long we didn't know how to do anything else. I toyed with the idea of stepping out in the traffic of one of the freeways below me, lit up with commuter traffic so dense it looked like strings of Christmas lights looped through the city. But if that was my solution I might as well not come back at all.

Right now I could be in Boston, in the house I always wanted to live in growing up, talking to Addie or just feeling that inexplicable sense of happiness that blanketed everything there. Maybe it's what I deserved for thinking that things had been better between us since I came back; for harboring the naive hope that we could have happiness in this little window of time before I wouldn't see him for who knew how long. Maybe I didn't deserve the chance to come back and try to put some things right when I'd had a hand in fucking them up so thoroughly the first time.

I was cold and sore when I slipped down off the wall and started the long walk home at dawn. My mind was mercifully blank after a night of berating myself as my anger at him subsided, and my anger at myself lit, burned, smoldered, and died. The sky had barely tinged pink when I came to some sort of resolution, or realization, or revelation, or whatever.

I walked slowly, watching the city come to life around me, ducking into stores and finding, to my delight, that once I picked something up it was invisible too. When I got home hours later the canvas bag slung over my shoulder was biting into my skin and the sun was high and hot in the sky.

Tate was sitting on the front porch, waiting. It was a long moment before he said anything. "I'm sorry."

"Stop doing shit to be sorry for." I wasn't angry, just tired, drained from everything that had happened. I walked around him and stopped at the door. "Me too."

My mother was reduced to tears when I walked into the kitchen, and guilt tugged at me for hurting her again. The gifts hidden in my bag did little to make either of us feel better, but were welcome all the same.

* * *

"If you touch that I'm going to stab you." I said thickly around a piece of crusty bread and stinky cheese.

He looked at me, amused. "With a butter knife?"

"Yeah. It will really fucking hurt. Dull edge." I swallowed and smiled. He removed his hand and I swiped some more Brie onto the blade before spreading it on the bread.

When I turned to look at him his nose was wrinkled up in disgust. "Is that safe to eat? It smells nasty."

I shrugged. "More for me." Not that I'd give him any anyway. I'd missed cheese. Nice stinky, soft cheese. It was like an orgasm with every bite, and I wasn't sharing even though I had eaten the whole thing myself.

"So where did you go?"

"Observatory; watched the fireworks."

"I didn't know you could leave."

"The house isn't what's keeping me here." I said simply.

"I didn't think you'd come back."

"I always come back, don't I? You're the only vice I have that ever meant anything."

He was glaring at me when I looked up. "What's that supposed to mean?" His voice somewhere between offended and proud.

"When I was alive and you weren't you could have stayed away from me. You knew it was wrong, and it didn't matter; you couldn't stay away. How long did you follow me around invisibly before you showed up in the bathroom?"

"Awhile." He said guiltily. I cocked an eyebrow at him and took another bite. "From the first time I saw you in the basement looking for your mom's dog." He said defensively.

"Why?"

He got up, moving to the other side of the island and putting some distance between us as he crossed his arms and leaned up against the counter. "At first to protect you." I had to suppress a laugh; he was the only thing I needed protection from. "Or that's what I told myself." He swiped a weary hand across his face. "But I wanted you. I was fascinated by you because I'd never seen a girl like you, with your weird jar of doll heads and all the shit you used to have up there. I thought about raping you; instead of your mother, I mean."

His eyes glossed over, remembering things I hadn't known about. "I couldn't do it, and I didn't know why at first until I realized I wanted you to love me; I didn't want you by force, I wanted you by choice, your choice. The same thing with killing you; I wanted you to stay here with me because you chose it. You're the only one I'd ever really wanted, you know? The only one I ever felt that way about."

I brushed the crumbs from my hand and got up, moving around the island and reaching out to him, wrapping my arms around his neck and resting my face against him. "You're the only one I ever loved; the only one I've ever really wanted." I murmured by way of an apology for yesterday as his arms cinched around me.

"I couldn't stay away from you either. You're the only person who ever just accepted me as I am, even when it means I'm pretty much sharp-tongued and horrible to everyone else. I just don't want to be that way with you anymore. How many years have we spent wounding each other and getting nowhere except someplace worse than where we started?"

One of his hands slipped up, knotting in my hair and holding me more closely to him. "What does it look like? Heaven, I mean."

I rubbed my face against him. "Boston, for me. The house I always dreamed I would live in when I was little. Sort of like the life you always dreamed of living."

"What do you mean?" There was wariness in his voice.

"It looks different for everyone. Just like we create our own Hell, Heaven is created for us." His hands clenched tighter and I tried to smother his panic before it ran away with him. "We'll be together." I said soothingly. "If it's what we both want, we'll be together." I reached up and kissed his neck. "Don't worry."

"Vi..." His voice trailing off disbelieving.

"Hey, between the two of us, who's been dead-dead?"

"Promise?" That one word holding more than he was saying. _Promise me you're not lying. Promise me that's the way it is. Promise me we'll be together_.

"Yeah. There's more though; something else you need to know."

"What?" I could hear the note of badly suppressed dread in his voice.

I pulled away, keeping one of his hands in one of mine as I scooped up the nearly empty bag I'd brought home from off the floor and lead him upstairs, shutting the door softly behind us, and hoping that was enough to keep anyone from eavesdropping. I sat him down on the bed next to me, toying with his fingers, framing what I needed to say.

"Purgatory, that happens in real time. If it takes decades for your soul to ascend it will feel like it and not just to you."

He looked at me, eyes and face clear of any emotion before he spoke. "But we'll be together someday?"

"Yeah." I watched him narrowing before he eventually shrugged by way of reply. "I don't think you get it, Tate." I said wearily. "We have two options: one - we die, really die, and someday, yeah, we'll be together, but neither of us know how long that's going to be, or two - we stay here, with all the limitations that brings, but together."

Now it was his turn to duck his face and play with my fingers. "I know what it means, Vi. But you want out of here, and so do I, and so do the others, and those that don't can come back. Wherever you go, I'll follow. If you want to stay, we'll stay."

I scooted away, reaching for the bag, and dumping its disparate contents out of the bed, sifting through until I found what I was looking for. "So you think it's a good idea to break the house?"

"Yeah."

"Wanna help?" I held up a long sharp knife, so much more deadly than the butter knife I'd threatened him with downstairs it was comical.

He lifted it from my hands gingerly, turning it over and over as the sun flashed off it it before smiling up at me, boyish dimples hiding the bloodlust behind them.

* * *

Hayden's body made a dull thunk against the concrete as she fell at my feet. I used my foot to tilt her head back. "You're getting better. Almost took her head off this time." I commented as he wiped the knife against his jeans, removing the blood.

He smiled at me, pleased with his handiwork. "Bet I can take Nora's clean off."

"Don't get smug. Besides we don't need to take it off completely, just sever the vital veins with one swipe."

"Yeah, but it's still fun. Come on, up for a bet?"

I leaned back against the stairs. "Okay. What do I get when I win?"

"Doesn't matter, you're not going to."

I scoffed. "When I win you're going to regret it."

He stepped around Hayden, leaning down, caging me with his arms. "When I win you're going to suck me off before we go to bed every night. For a week."

I reached up, knotting my hands into his hair and pulling his face away. "You better win then because if you don't I'm going to cut it off." I saw the color drain from his face at the thought of it. "Sure you wanna bet against me now?"

He smiled wickedly before pulling me up and leading me through the basement looking for his next victim, finding her twisting her handkerchief in her hands and silently crying; watery black stripes tracking down her face. If anyone ever needed waterproof mascara...

Tate took a step in the room, but I pulled him back. He looked at me confused until he realized I was making him hide so I could lead her out. "Nora? Mrs. Montgomery?"

"Who are you? Where's my baby?" She said harshly.

"I have your baby, just out here." I motioned to the room behind me and she pushed herself up urgently and walked out. As she passed I pressed myself against the opposite side of the doorway and Tate reached out, slitting her throat in one fluid movement. "Ha!" I exclaimed once her body hit the floor. "Still attached; spine gets in the way. Give me the knife."

He handed it over sullenly but his voice was full of bravado when he spoke. "Should I whip my dick out now, or do you want to wrestle it out of my pants?"

I leaned up, tracing the shell of his ear with my tongue. "Later. Come on... let's go back upstairs." We clambered up the stairs, through the house, up more stairs, before slamming the door to our room loudly behind us. I flung the knife away into the desk chair. "So... Halloween?"

"Best bet, everyone will be out the house except Charles and Thaddeus." He flopped down on the bed, subconsciously resting a hand over his dick, thankful for its continuing attachment no doubt.

"Still want to wait until evening?" I stretched out next to him, kicking his dirty, blood caked shoes off the bed.

"Not really, but I want to see them before we do anything."

"Think it will help?"

"I don't know, worth a try."

"I guess." I said uncertainly.

"I'll come back, you won't have to do it alone." I rolled over and wrapped my arms around him, thankful to not have the weight of this resting on my shoulders alone.

* * *

We both sat looking at the clock as it glowed through the dark: 12:01AM. Halloween. Officially. I sucked in the sticky sweet, but slightly stale smoke deeply, hoping there was enough residual THC to calm me down. I held it in as long as I could before coughing it out.

"Lightweight." Tate mutter next to me.

"Fuck you." I wheezed. "This shit's a year old. Almost forgot I had it."

Tate nudged me. "Give it." I sucked in another lungful and crawled on top of him, lowing my mouth to his, and exhaling it to his mouth while he sucked it in, his hands shamelessly caressing my ass. "Tasty." He said tightly and I pulled away, nursing the cherry with small puffs.

Somewhere around halfway through it his rutting up against me became something more than idle, and I decided to let his hands, and lips, and cock soothe me; to let them say goodbye because after today who knew how long it would be before I'd get to feel them again.

When dawn arrived I was sprawled against him naked and sated, tracing shapes across his chest as his fingers mimicked the movement on my flesh. "I should go soon." He murmured, pressing his lips against the top of my head as my hand smoothed up his chest, around his neck, holding him to me.

"Not yet."

"Sooner I go, sooner I get back."

"Not yet." My voice was laced in tears, and he gave in, staying in bed with me, silently, until the sun was high in sky. I watched him dress with dread roiling in my stomach.

He crawled across the bed, giving me a gentle, chaste kiss. "I'll come back." He said reassuringly.

"Promise?"

"Promise." And he was out the door. I buried my face into the blankets stretched across my knees, letting my tears stain them until there was a sharp knock on the door and I looked up to find my mother.

"We're going to the park with the baby. Do you want to come?"

"No thanks. Maybe I'll go trick-or-treating with you later though."

"You don't have any plans?"

"Not really." _Understatement of the century_ I thought ruefully. She withdrew with a smile, off to enjoy her one day of freedom; maybe her last one for a while, though she didn't know it.

When Tate finally reappeared hours later he was limping and bloody, one hand clutched to his side. "Think I broke a rib." He said painfully as he lowered himself onto the bed.

"How did it go?" I kneeled next to him, pulling his hand away, lifting his shirt up to look his injuries over.

"Not great. Everybody out of the house?"

"Yeah, but my parents will be back later to dress up and take the baby trick-or-treating."

"What do they plan to do with the candy? Put it through a blender and into his bottle?"

I smiled at him. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Yeah, give me a few hours and I'll be fine." His hand reached out and wrapped around mine, his thumb tracing nervous circles until he fell asleep.

Several hours later the sun was down and he was still asleep when there was a soft tap at the door and I opened for the second time to see my mother. This time she was in a witch costume. "We're leaving." I opened the door to show her Tate still asleep. "What happened to him?" She asked, taking in the blood stained clothes.

"Tried to make peace with his victims at Westfield. Didn't go well."

"He tried, that's something." She said kindly before kissing me on the forehead and leaving. I walked over to the window and watched as they made their way down the walk and out onto the street. I laid on the bed next to Tate, brushing my fingers across his face as I watched his eyes flutter open at the contact.

"It time?"

"Yeah. How do you feel?"

He stretched hugely, finishing by flexing his fingers. "Better. Everything healed up."

"You sure you want to do this?" I asked nervously.

He rolled over facing me, resting a hand on my hip. "I want you to be happy, Vi. Please, let me do this; let me make you happy. I fucked up everything else; couldn't save, hurt you - over and over - I can finally do something right, let me do it."

I took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. "Okay." I brushed my lips against his, afraid that if I let myself say goodbye for real, I'd never go through with this.

* * *

The house was eerily quiet as we made our way downstairs, hand-in-hand, to the basement. True to our plan, Tate wandered off into a dark corner of the basement and I dug the axe out from where I'd stashed it behind a pile of junk in an alcove. My head whipped around when I heard a strangled scream and I raced to the source of the noise.

"Gimme that." Tate pulled the axe from my hands and with a huge swing brought it down across Thaddeus' throat, severing his spine with a sickening crunch. "Just want to make sure." He muttered before repositioning and whacking at his chest.

"What are you doing?" Shrieked Charles, racing forward to stop us. "Don't you understand! Don't you see the importance of what I've done!" He was surprisingly lucid, for him anyway, but totally hysterical. Tate shoved the axe at me and lunged for him, dragging him from the room, and leaving me to finish hacking into Thaddeus' chest cavity.

It was messy work and the axe was unwieldy, but I got there in the end, dropping down on top of him and using all my strength to push apart his ribs just as Tate walked up behind me. "Knife?"

"Here." It was sticky with half dried blood already but it did it's job, cleanly severing out the heart I was after. I gave a little chuckle as I pulled it free. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing really. It's just the last time I cut you up I was sitting on top of you like this and wishing I could rip your heart out like I just did his." He helped me to my feet and picked up Thaddeus' head. "We don't need that."

"Just in case."

I rolled my eyes. "It's not Dracula we're killing, all we need is the heart."

"I'm just being thorough."

"I hate the smell of burning hair." I grumbled and led the way over to the furnace, bunching up my shirt to grab the handle, like burning myself mattered at this point. Old habits and all that. We tossed the pieces in and I slammed the door, fiddling with the ancient controls that made no sense to me before Tate pushed me out of the way and twisted knobs until the flames inside shot up.

"How long do you think it will take before we know?" He breathed the words out onto my neck, and I shivered despite the stifling heat.

"I don't know. I don't know if it has to be ash or what. If it does we'll be here awhile."

I watched the flames through the grate impatiently, toying with the idea of seeing if there was any lighter fluid in the house to speed the process along.

"Violet." Tate's voice was strained and ragged and I turned around, taking in the blood seeping through his layers of shirts before my eyes found his frightened ones as he slumped heavily against the wall and slid down to the floor, leaving a crimson stain in his wake.

I dropped down, cupping his face in my hands. "It's okay." I said softly while his hands clutched at me. He tried to talk but couldn't form the words, his mouth working like a fish out of water while his eyes pleaded with me. It didn't matter, I knew what he was trying to say. "I love you too." He nodded, weakly, and closed his eyes. "I'll wait too." I said to myself because he was gone.

I stayed kneeling next to him on the floor, brushing my fingers and lips across him until he disappeared. Just gone in the blink of an eye. Like he'd never been there. I guess that's what happens when you decide you don't want to come back.

I was in the kitchen a few hours later when my parents walked through the front door. I heard their bodies hit the floor before I even made it off the chair I was sitting on; my father with a brilliant red ring around his neck, my mother's dress soaked in blood. I dragged them out of the way of the door, and sat down on the steps, waiting. It was nearly dawn when the last of the stragglers, came in; Chad, Moira, and Nora all succumbing to the wounds that killed them.

When I left the house it looked like Hugo, Fiona, and Dallas were the only ones coming back. I didn't dwell on it too much, more concerned with the one task I still wanted to complete before I went away for good.

* * *

Constance never knew what hit her; deafness comes with old age, and I'd never really appreciated it until the moment I snuck in through her back door and knocked her across the head with a heavy ceramic mixing bowl that was sitting on her counter. She was furious when she woke up, bound and gagged on the couch.

"Bet you thought you'd never see me again." I laughed. "Don't worry, after this you won't, but you won't be seeing Tate or Beau either. I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm not." I stood up, smoothing my clothes. "Get comfortable, it will be a few hours before you're untied." I walked from the room, closing the sliding doors behind me and made my way back to the kitchen, smoking through most of the open pack of cigarettes on the table before the front door open and closed, and footsteps scuffed across the entryway, towards the kitchen.

He stopped in his tracks when he saw me. "Where's my grandmother?"

"Sit." I said simply, pointing to a chair on the opposite side of the table from me.

"No. Where's Constance?"

"Living room. Don't worry I didn't kill her." He scowled. "Maybe I should have huh?" He sat down across from me, eyeing me suspiciously the whole time. "Has she ever made you read the Bible?"

"No."

"Guess I'm not surprised, all things considered."

"What does that mean?" I smiled at him, could see the irritation building in his face that I knew something he didn't.

"Doesn't matter really." I pulled Tate's ring from my pocket. "Do you know what this is?"

"A ring." He rolled his eyes.

"Not just any ring, Tate's ring; the one he always wore."

"Wore?"

"Let's just say you're not the only one who can kill people like me and him." I flipped the ring between my fingers. "The Bible says _Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you_. Did you know that? Oh, sorry, nevermind. But that's kind of the point: you're the serpent, the scorpion, the enemy; somewhere out there is the person you won't be able to hurt by any means."

"Not you?"

"Not me. You can kill me again if you want." I shrugged. "If it makes you feel better about what I did to Constance or whatever. If you don't I'm on my way to die anyway, so who gives a shit right? Either way I won't be here in a few hours."

He relaxed, shrugging, indifferent to me, and I slipped the ring back in my pocket as I got up and walked out the door.

* * *

I walked along the beach, averting my eyes from the steel gray sky by watching my feet; enjoying the texture of tiny pebbles under my them, so different from the beaches of Los Angeles. I was alone though, here. Not always, but my walks on the beach were always solitary. When I got back home someone might be there; Addie or my parents maybe. I tried to squash the hope in my heart that it would be the one person I really wanted to see. Mornings and nights were the worst; I always woke searching the bed for him, and went to sleep holding on to the hope that tomorrow morning would be different.

I sat down on an outcropping of rock, feeling the spray from the crashing waves misting on my face, looking up occasionally to see the sea birds wheeling in the wind. I hunched over, tucking my hands into my pockets to keep them warm as I watched wave after wave roll in. It was nice, this routine I had. The waves rolling in soothing me hypnotically.

I was so lost in watching how each wave crested white and frothy before crashing against the rocks below me that I startled at the voice.

"I like sand better." He said simply, and I smiled.

"Took you long enough."

* * *

So... surprise? shock? confusion? I hope not disappointment. I was sort of captivated by the idea of burnt offerings, not just in the Judeo-Christian mythology, but by the way that it permeated ancient beliefs of other cultures as well. I have a whole Occam's Razor thing going on with why the house is the way it is, and it works for me, so I hope it works for you too.

Anyway, I really, really enjoyed writing this part because I got to write from Violet's POV again, which I haven't in like forever, but which is fun for me. I think it was kinda necessary here especially after how she behaved in the first chapter. Speaking of which I always pegged Vi as the one who would rebel against the house at some point, I just needed a way to push her that extreme, you know? Hence the angst.

As always I reviews are super appreciated (to quote Cheryl/Carol Tunt "My whole thing is that I crave attention.").

Rec's, rec's, rec's.

**Copy Cat** by ShootingStella - super amazing, and I love her Violet, and her Violet's inner monologue and pretty much everything about this. From the AHS Exchange **Dive In Me** by Scarlettwoman710 and **Neptune's Oyster** by ShootingStella were my two absolute favourites. Read them. **Tate's Conscience** by TheDevotchka continues to amaze me. And of course what is rapidly becoming my favourite fic ever,** The Curve of Her Lips** by Scarlettwoman710 & ohyellowbird.


	4. Year Zero

**A/N:** Well what can I say? ScarletWoman asks and I obey (eventually). Two things: 1.) I purposefully kept some things vague (like time) since I think it's better for the reader to fill that in, in their head, and 2.) it gets political at the end, so you're been warned.

* * *

When I opened my eyes to find myself on a deserted beach I really hoped there wasn't some sort of heavenly fuck up, and then I hoped there was because it was better than the alternative: Violet didn't want me anymore.

There was a city in the distance off to my left. I had no clue if it was Boston or not, but I wasn't just going to sit there and wait to see if Violet found me. I'd walk up the beach and if she was there, she was there, and if not I'd keep walking until I found her.

Thankfully I didn't have far to go, which meant my fear didn't have time to blossom into the hysteria it was threatening to. She was crouched on some rocks, watching the waves wash in, too distracted to hear the distinctive crunch of my feet across the gravel as I approached. "I like sand better." I quipped when I was a few feet away.

"Took you long enough." She said evenly, but when she turned around I knew she wasn't as calm as she was pretending to be. A second later I was hit with full frontal Violet, the force of her body impacting with mine sending me stumbling backwards.

I was never going to let her go. Not tomorrow, not a hundred tomorrows from now. Never. I kept trying to tell her that, tell her that I loved her, that I'd missed her, that I had since the day we parted, but with her lips on mine I had to settle for showing her.

It was dark by the time she finally could stand putting an inch of space between us, but her breathing was rough, and her voice heavy with want. "Let's go home."

It was probably a good idea. If we didn't get to a bed soon one of us would probably have pebbles permanently embedded in their ass.

"How did you find me?" Violet asked curiously as we walked, arms still firmly anchored around each other.

"I don't know, it just seemed like the thing to do, to walk up the beach, instead of towards the city."

"What happened when _you_ woke up here?"

"I was in my bed, in my house - _our house_ - with a cat. I was beginning to think it was some sort of consolation prize. I didn't get you, so I get to be a cat lady for the rest of forever. But when I opened the closest looking for something to wear all your clothes were there, and there were books and things that weren't mine, so I knew I just had to wait."

We were passing docks full of boats, soft lights bouncing off them as they bobbed gently in the water. "Is it always this peaceful?"

"It's Heaven, Tate, of course it is." She pulled me close for a second as we walked, reassuring me. We walked quietly through the city, past new buildings and old ones, through parks and squares. There were people around, some eating dinner at restaurants, which I found curious, but every time I'd want to ask Violet to explain something, I'd see something else to distract me.

Finally we passed into a residential neighborhood. "That's the house I grew up in." Violet pointed to a thoroughly modern building, all steel and concrete and glass, wildly different than what I would have imagined.

"Do your parents live there now?"

"My dad does, my mom lives on the other side of town. Do you remember that guy who worked for the home security company?"

"Vaguely. Black guy?"

"Yeah, Luke, they got married a few years ago. Apparently he was shot and killed trying to stop some burglars a few years after we died."

"What about Ben?"

"Wasn't who she was supposed to be with, I guess." She said simply. "They're still friends, which I find kind of weird, but whatever."

"Think he's waiting for Hayden?"

"No, he's happiest being single, so that's what he got."

"_That_ seems weird. I mean marriage, monogamy, those are pretty important things in Christianity."

"Divinely inspired, but not guided." She quoted herself, reminding me of the conversation we'd had a literal lifetime ago. "And if marriage were that important we wouldn't be shaking up, would we?"

"So what is?"

"Loving the other person, respecting them. Those are the things that matter." She said with authority before pulling me through a wrought iron gate and into a stone flagged courtyard, towards a house covered in flowering vines, warm light spilling out the windows.

A small dog trotting towards us, making Violet stop in her tracks. "Well that's new."

The scruffy little guy sniffed at my shoes, then sat down and looked up at me expectantly as he wagged his tail. "Hey, I know you." I said as I picked him, and he licked at me happily. Violet twisted his collar around, tilting the tag on it on the dim light to read off the name 'Marlon' before she looked up at me questioningly.

"He was a stray I brought home when I was eight or nine. The Cocksucker took him to the shelter, saying something about not wanting any more mongrels in her home than she already had."

"Figures." Violet scoffed. "Well he has a home now, so do you, or were you planning on spending the night in the front yard?" She smirked before taking my free hand in hers.

"You don't lock the door?" I asked, bewildered, as she led me inside.

"Heaven." She reminded me. "No one's going to rob the place, and no one will just come in. Actually no one will even come by if I don't want to see anyone."

"How does that work?" I asked as she closed the door behind me.

"Don't know. Just one of those quirks. You get used to it."

I looked around the dimly lit hallway, a small white cat with black spots and a black tail watching us from the staircase tucked unobtrusively against the wall. "Is this going to be okay?" I nodded down at the dog.

"I think so, set him down." We watched nervously as Marlon sat at my feet, the cat walking over fearlessly until they sniffed each other, and then a moment later the cat rubbed the length of its body across his face, purring happily. "Well that was easy."

"What's it's name?"

"_Her_ name is Domino." I crouched down, carefully extending a hand to the cat, which sniffed and then pressed into it. "Do you want to see the rest of the house?" Violet asked nervously, her hands twisting around each other.

"Sure."

I let her lead me around, pointing into the small kitchen, a stone fireplace at the opposite end of the room next to a small wooden table fit for two and all the usual paraphernalia you'd expect, then further down the hall that ended in the living room. "It's not a very big house." She said apologetically.

"It's perfect." I murmured, brushing a kiss to her forehead before I walked around the room, taking in the red velvet couch dominating it, the wall opposite home to another fireplace and built in shelves in dark wood, bursting with books and curios, some of which I recognized as my own. There were pictures too, ones of her and her family, even one of me and Addie.

I looked out the windows, into the backyard that it was too dark to really see. The room reminded me of the inside of an old sailing ship, all dark wood and low beamed ceilings. "Do you like it?" She asked, watching me apprehensively from the door, ignoring Domino twisting around her ankles.

"I do." I kissed her lips softly. "It's very you, and you've always felt like home to me." Another kiss. "You want to show me the rest?" She nodded, taking my hand in hers again to lead me upstairs, pointing out the door to guest room at the front of the house, the bathroom to our side, and our room at the back of the house when we reached the second floor.

I let her lead me across the landing, and into our room, the same bed I remembered from her room at Murder House, complete with the same sheets and blankets, was pushed up against one wall.

"I'm glad you kept that bed." I whispered in her ear as my arms cinched around her waist. "I always loved it." I dipped down kissing her neck and biting marks into it as we tumbled across the room, shedding clothes along the way.

* * *

"Tired?" Violet asked as she rested her chin on my chest, closing her eyes in pleasure as my fingers traced up the rungs of her spine, and around her shoulder.

"Nope. Sore?"

"Nope."

"Hmm... might have to do something about that."

She pushed herself forward, kissing up my chest to my neck before whispering, "we've got time", into my ear.

I smiled at the thought of forever, here, with Violet; our own little slice of Heaven. "I missed you. I missed this." She sighed contentedly, our arms wrapping around each other again. "I missed whispering things to do you in the dark and holding you. I missed making love to you, but I missed this just as much."

"Me too." She murmured, her fingers flexing in my hair like a happy cat.

"So other than your parents, have you seen anyone else?"

"Addie and Beau occasionally, and Moira was at my mom's wedding. They don't live in Boston, so I don't see them often. If you don't want to see someone though, you don't have to. So if Constance were here you wouldn't have to see her if you didn't want to, even if she wants to see you. Make sense?"

"Yeah, but how does that work? Seeing people in different places, I mean."

"Pretty much how it works on Earth. I mean we could roadtrip from here to Cali if you felt like it, or take a plane. We can go anywhere."

"Where have you been?"

"Here. Waiting for you."

"You didn't have to."

"I wanted to. What if I left, and you got here when I wasn't?"

"I would have waited."

"I didn't want to go anywhere without you, I didn't see the point." She said softly, and I felt her blush at the admission, like it was something embarrassing. There was a warmth in my chest at her words, spreading out and snaking through my veins.

"Anywhere. Anywhere you want to go, I'll go with you." I promised her. "Tell me more, the little things, the weird things." _Anything to keep listening to your voice_, I added silently.

"You don't have to pay for anything. If you went into a bookstore there's no one working there, so you just take what you want. The same thing with restaurants, no waiters, nothing. You just sit down, and look at the menu and once you decide what you want it's just there. Even here, if you look in the fridge or cabinets whatever ingredients you need, they're there."

"The only thing that's kind of weird is we don't get TV. Not that we don't have one, we do, but if you want to watch something you have to watch DVD's. No internet either, which sucked at first." She said in a tortured voice. "But you don't really need it. I mean there's no 'news', so no need for it."

"So you don't know what's going on, on Earth?"

"Not a clue. Honestly, you stop caring after a while. There's nothing you can do about it anyway. Once we make the decision to stay, we have to."

"You know it's a good thing you decided to come back before your forty-nine days expired. You definitely would have woken up six feet under."

"I don't know, it might have been kinda fun. I think I could have drug myself inside all muddy and wailed about brains for a while before anyone realized I didn't come back as a zombie." She teased.

"Why forty-nine days?" I asked when we stopped laughing.

"Dunno exactly. It's the time specified in Bardo between death and rebirth, but that's all I've ever been able to figure out."

"Bardo?"

"The word means 'in-between state'; it's a Buddhist belief." She explained. "Honestly though, it's pretty much like you're used to from life. You get used to the little, weird things in time."

"I always imagined Heaven as a place where angels wore white robes and sat on clouds playing the harp."

"I'm not sure if that exists, but there are higher states. We can evolve past this if we want, but most people don't want to, at least not for a long time."

"Why?"

"Fear maybe. No one here really knows what it's like, sort of like no one on earth whose alive can know what this is like. The only thing that's really known is that it exists, and part of it is giving up the bonds of humanity - friends and family - that hold people together here."

"That sounds like Hell."

"I always imagine it as like living in a monastery or something. You give up a lot, but you get other things in return. Most people don't want it, and that's okay; some people do, and that's okay too."

"We don't ever have to leave here though, do we?"

Her fingers reached up, caressing across my cheek at the panic in my voice. "No, unless that's what we want. This is still Heaven, Tate." She said, gently.

Despite her words I couldn't escape the thought that she'd leave me again. I'd always follow her, but if what she was saying was true, she wouldn't love me, need me, like she did now. I needed to know, despite everything, that she'd always be mine, that we'd never have to give each other up, and the solution came so naturally is slid off my tongue without thought. "Marry me?"

"Smooth, Tate."

I sat us both us, taking her left hand in mine, tracing around her ring finger with my own. "I'm serious, Vi, marry me."

"No. I'm not going to marry you because you're scared I'll leave. I came back _for you_. I've been waiting here _for you_, for years. Marrying you isn't what's going to make me stay."

"Then what is?"

"Do you remember what I said I needed when I came back?"

"_I don't need anything. I just need you. Not what you think I want, and not the you, you think I need. Just you_." I quoted perfectly, reciting the words that had sustained me for years.

"I still just need you, Tate."

And that was all it took for my fear to crumble and collapse. It was the certainly, the absolute certainty in her voice, and it killed me. "Sorry."

"It's okay."

"Let me make it up to you?" I kissed her shoulder, tracing out the fragile bone under her skin with my tongue, and making her breath hitch.

Later, after I'd mapped out every dig and curve on her body, after I pulled her on top of me and made her cum so hard she couldn't support herself on her slick thighs, after she'd collapsed against me sticky and sated, the last thought before I joined her in sleep was that nothing would take her away from me again.

xxxx

Gently as I could I slipped out of bed, not wanting to wake Violet up, but too curious to stay put. The sun was shining through the windows opposite us, and even though I knew there were houses beyond the trees I couldn't see them; all trace of the neighbors was artfully hidden behind shrubs and branches. I wondered, idly, if that was Heaven thing, or if that's how it was on earth as I pulled on my boxers.

I took a quick look into the bathroom, but decided I wasn't ready to wash the scent of her off my skin, and moved to the guest room; neither were remarkable. The only thing that really struck me was how light and open the upstairs was. The ceiling was higher, and painted white to match the walls; the opposite of the downstairs.

When I got to the bottom of the stairs Marlon trotted out of the kitchen, licking my bare ankle briefly before making his way over to the backdoor and scratching at it. It wasn't until I opened the door that I noticed a small room I hadn't seen the night before. There was no door, just an open space in the wall and a small room behind it housing a loveseat, TV, and a lot of DVD's.

Even though Violet had told me to expect it, I was still pleasantly surprised to find all my favourite movies there. Eventually I walked back into the living room, inspecting the contents of the shelves and smiling hugely when I found the bird book that had been my favourite from the Westfield library before making my way to the kitchen, suddenly ravenously hungry.

I opened the cabinets indiscriminately, not knowing where Violet kept things, and looking at her sheepishly when she walked in stretching and yawning, her hair a mess and my shirt falling to her thighs. She wrapped her arms around me, planting a kiss between my shoulder blades before asking what I wanted to eat.

"Whatever you have is fine." She started pulling food out of the fridge, heating a pan of milk on the stove as coffee steeped on the counter. I sat at the table staying out of her way, enjoying watching her work. Before long there was a plate of food steaming in front of me. I smirked at the contrast between Violet's plate and mine. Mine was half full of scrambled eggs, half a dozen pieces of bacon and a couple pieces of toast filling the other half. Her plate was much less crowded.

"Don't worry, you don't have to eat it all." She said, setting down two cups of cafe au lait and dropping a few pieces of chocolate into them. Domino wandered in as we ate, sitting in Violet's lap watching her plate as the food on it disappeared.

"That was really good." I said appreciatively once I'd finished. "Perfect, actually."

"I told you, whatever you want we'll have it, even if you don't know you want it. Do you want to go out, explore a little?"

"What if someone comes by?" I asked, my thoughts flying to Addie and Beau. Violet looked at me, stricken. "What?"

"Addie... I'm not sure if she'll want to see you. After she found out what you did, at Westfield and the house, she was... well she was scared of you." I could see the effort it took for Violet to tell me, the pain painted across her face, and her apprehension at my reaction.

I looked down at my plate, dragging my fork across the dregs on it. "Guess I deserve that." I muttered, before hiding my face in my hands. "Let's go out."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. It'll be worse if I sit around."

Surprisingly, after a few hours of walking with Violet's hand in mine, and Marlon following along I did actually feel a little better. By the time we settled down in a park, I could enjoy Violet sitting on top of me, trying to convince me to open my mouth for a fried oyster. "They're aphrodisiacs, you know."

"No, I wouldn't, because I'm never going to eat one of those things." I smoothed my hands up her thighs to her hips. "And that is the last thing you need." She smiled as I rutted up against her, and leaned in for a kiss, which despite the oyster breath, I didn't dodge.

I whined when she sat back up, popping in the last oyster and rolling off me. "Geez, Tate, it's Heaven and you're trying to fuck me in a park. That's just so wrong." She said, sounding scandalized, but failing to repress her smile. She leaned back against the tree we were under, running her fingers through my hair until I rolled over, using her thighs as a pillow. "Can I suggest something?"

"Hmm?"

"Write to Addie. Keep writing until she changes her mind. I've tried for a long time, and I think it made some difference, but it's not the same coming from me as it is from you."

"Can't I just call her?"

"No phones."

"That's so weird. What's she like now anyway? And Beau too, have you seen him?"

"You won't recognize them, I didn't. Well Beau a little because he looks like your dad, but the only way I recognized Addie was because she had your eyes. She's really pretty, Tate."

"She was always pretty." I grumbled.

"I know. I asked her about it once, why she looked different. She said she always looked like that, just not everybody saw it."

"Do you see them a lot?"

"No, I told you they don't live close by. Addie, usually a couple times a month when she's on her way to visit Beau - she lives in New York, and he lives in Maine - and he'll sail down during the summer. He's really looking forward to taking us sailing, by the way." She added.

"He's not scared of me?"

"No."

I smiled. "I'm glad you had them here. I was worried you wouldn't have anyone, and I didn't want you to be alone."

"I had my parents."

I cocked my head, squinting up at her. "I didn't have much faith in Ben making it out of purgatory before me."

* * *

It was the same every year, as soon as the first snow started to fall we kitted up and left the house, walking around for hours as it blanketed Boston. When it happened at night, like it had this time, it was always the best. It made the world soft and muffled, like it existed only for us as the snowflakes fluttered to earth in the warm glow of the streetlamps.

It was easy to be happy here, with Violet. We had each other, had everything we always wanted, and the life we never got the chance to live in a place where we were happy and free; where it was peaceful, and forgiveness meant all our past sins couldn't touch us.

Sometimes that forgiveness came from unexpected quarters, like Violet's parents. Ben and I still didn't particularly care for each other, but that was personality, not history. But seeing Vivien the first time had been terrifying now that I knew exactly what I did to her, knew the exact extent of the emotional damage my physical violation of her had caused. Purgatory had been brutal in teaching me those lessons.

Even if it wasn't warm and fuzzy when she turned up a few weeks after I arrived she managed to comport herself with a lot more grace that I did. She might not have dried my tears, but she accepted my apology, and even told me how happy she was that Violet found someone who loved and appreciated her.

Addie had been more of a problem. It wasn't about forgiveness with her because what I had done didn't directly hurt her, although my actions did indirectly. She wasn't scared of me, not anymore. She told me that in her first letter. Told me how Violet said I was a good person who had done bad things, sometimes for the right reasons and sometimes for the wrong ones, but no one who was wicked and selfish could have tried so hard to save her life.

Then she told me she was disappointed because the brother who had loved and protected her was no different than the mother he was trying to save her from.

And she was right, I wasn't, and it hurt.

But that had been the worst of it, and after a while she decided that I wasn't so much like Constance as she thought; that the difference between her and I (and Nora for that matter) was that everything I did, even if it was wrong of me to do, was done for the benefit of others.

It took her a long time, but eventually she loved me like the brother she deserved again. In that time Violet and I had traveled a lot, but the best trip we'd taken so far was sailing with her and Beau to the Azores this past summer. It was just the four of us on a sail boat drifting across the calm Atlantic waters to the beautiful verdant islands. We spent days sailing from one secluded harbor to the next, swimming to shore sometimes to explore, and sometimes taking the dinghy so could have cook outs on the beach.

It was idyllic, and not just because of the location, but because everybody finally saw the people Beau and Addie had always been to me; smart and funny and caring. They were free now of the physical limitations they suffered from in life, and it made me happy.

And as if that weren't enough the friendship between Violet and both of them that had begun at Murder House had blossomed here; she was just as close to them as she was to her own family, and nothing made me happier than seeing the true bonds of affection that existed between them.

It was all of those thoughts rolling in my head as we walked through the snow that made me pull Violet close and tell her that I loved her, that I was happy she had destroyed the power of Murder House, even if she did it for selfish reasons that had landed her a short stint in purgatory.

* * *

I wasn't exactly sure how breakfast had turned into me fucking Violet on the kitchen counter. Maybe it was her pale legs swinging back and forth as she sat on it teasing me, or the shirt she had on doing little to conceal the creamy expanse of her thighs. Maybe it was the way they wrapped around my waist when she pulled me between them with her little hand knotted into my shirt.

Her panties, the only other clothing she had on, didn't last long after that. She had developed a taste for filmy, lacy underwear lately and I wasn't complaining, not least of which because half the fun of them was literally tearing them off. I liked the way they disintegrated under my fingers, like wrapping paper around a gift, which was pretty much accurate.

She shifted against me, as much as she could with one of her hands pinned up against the cabinet by mine, and my other firmly around her waist, probably bruising impressions of my finger tips around her hip bone. "Deeper." She dug her nails of her free hand into my shoulder as if to accentuate the request. "Make it hurt," she begged.

I pulled her an inch forward, driving up into her as hard as I could, slamming into the barrier I met inside her. "Yes, fuck, just like that." She groaned, her body arching and drenching my cock in response. Her breathing became tight and rapid, mimicking perfectly the way her cunt clenched around me, and just when I thought I might black out from the pleasure and exertion of it she came with a cry, my name rolling off her lips like a valediction, making me explode inside her.

I slumped against her, tasting her on the deep lungfuls of air I inhaled before pulling her off the counter and onto the floor before my legs gave out.

"We have a couch."

"Not going to make it that far."

Her fingers danced up my torso, and around my neck, as she pressed into me. "Do you think we'll still want each other this much after another decade?"

"It's Heaven, Vi, what do you think?"

"Good. I still want you to bend me over the back of the couch and fuck me that way. Later though, you can take a nap first." She said sweetly, like what she hadn't just described bordered on pornographic.

She reached over me, picking up the shredded remains of her underwear and smiling before flinging them towards the trashcan.

* * *

I stilled, shutting off the tap to better here the conversation going at the front door, hands still submerged in soapy dishwater.

"Violet?" Said a male voice I didn't recognize.

"Yes?"

"You're just like I remember." That sent me scrambling.

"I'm sorry, but I don't know you." She replied, voice thoroughly confused. As I rounded the kitchen door and into the hallways I could see two men standing on our doorstep, looking amused.

One of them laughed. "You do. I just look different from the last time you saw me." I walked up behind Violet, putting my hands on her hips protectively, wary of these strangers.

"Who are you?" I demanded, the authority in my voice sounding strange after so many years of never needing it.

"Sorry, I'm Mason." The dark haired man said, extending a hand to me that I automatically shook. "This is my partner Noah. I know it's a little awkward, but I do know you, both of you actually." He smiled at Violet. "I'm your brother."

Violet seemed stunned into speechlessness, and it even took me a while to get it together enough to invite them inside; long enough that they'd both started looking deeply uncomfortable. I guided Violet out of the doorway, and motioned them in, pulling her along with me to the living room, and sitting her down in a chair before she found her voice.

"What are you doing here?" The words rushed out of her mouth and then her hand flew up, covering it, as if she didn't realize how stupid it sounded until she spoke. They were dead, that's what they were doing here. She shook her head like a dog trying to expel water from its ears before opening her mouth again. "I mean, you remember me?" She asked, clearly confused.

Mason smiled again. "You used to sing me old Rolling Stones and David Bowie songs to get me to sleep."

"You were a baby. Not even that, you were a dead baby, a ghost. How do even remember that?"

He shrugged as if it was nothing. "The soul isn't a slate that gets wiped clean. I remembered; I just didn't understand it until I got here."

"When did you get here?"

"A few days ago."

"If you don't mind me asking, _how_ did you get here?" I interjected, while trying to remember exactly how many years it had been since we left Murder House the last time.

The two men exchanged a glance. "Do you know anything about what's been going on with the living?" Noah said uncomfortably, speaking for the first time.

I shook my head. "No, the only source of information we have are people who are new here, and since everyone we knew died decades ago we're a bit out of touch. It's not like there's Google in Heaven." Violet supplied.

"What's Google?" Mason asked.

"Don't I know how that feels." I said quietly.

"My point is that no, we don't know what's going on, but I take it from your expressions it's not good."

"You could say that." Mason replied, dryly, and I felt the mood in the room shift, becoming thick and tense. My hands were shaking as I automatically picked up the pack of cigarettes from the coffee table, lighting one for Violet and I.

"Since you don't know anything I'll start at the beginning." He continued. "By the time I was in my early teens your son was already making news. Even if you disagreed with Michael Langdon you knew who he was. He had graduated from Thomas Aquinas College; a small, private Catholic college north of Los Angeles."

"Very traditional." Noah interjected.

"Anyway, he studied catholicism, but after he graduated expanded his studies to include religions other than christian. By the time he was in his mid-twenties he had founded his own church in Orange County. It was a very brave thing to do in a way. There were several evangelical mega-churches in the area that were very powerful both spiritually and politically in the county."

"From all accounts he started his church in a storefront in a rundown strip-mall, but it grew quickly, drawing members from the rival churches in the area. In a few years he was the pastor of his own mega-church; he traveled both in the U.S. and abroad preaching his message; wrote books, did interviews all of that sort of thing."

He reached for the cigarettes and lit one while I watched him raptly, terrified by where this narrative was going. "As I said, by the time I was in my early teens he was everywhere, and he set up churches all over the place, like franchises. He had the ear of many politicians though he never ran for office himself. They were important alliances though and in retrospect, you could see his influence in what was supposed to be secular policy very early on."

"Like what?" Violet asked.

"Probably stuff you're familiar with from when you were alive, even if you were a teenager then; all that anti-gay rights, anti-women's rights, anti-immigrant shit that had been going on forever." I snorted. Constance would probably have been his biggest supporter even if he wasn't her little miracle baby. "It was an easy sell for the most part because people were so swept up in what Michael was preaching, and if you watched him preach it was very hard not to believe. He was charismatic, intelligent, attractive... he inspired faith and devotion in the masses preaching his brand of the gospels."

"But it was all the same Old Testament stuff; real fire and brimstone. People ate it up." He said dismissively. "So that was the beginning, but then something very strange happened." He smiled ruefully, and I felt a wave of nausea roll through me. "Crops started failing. Grains, fruits, vegetables, everything. Without grain animals couldn't be fed either, so there was no meat or milk. He preached that the end times were upon us, and if we wanted to save ourselves we had to purify the land."

"I was in my twenties then; it was..." He looked up as if the words he was looking for were painted on the ceiling. "I've never seen anything like it. When the food ran out there was total anarchy. People were rioting, killing each other for scraps of moldy bread, anything, so they wouldn't starve to death as many people had. Michael stepped in, made bargains with leaders of other countries where the President had failed, and slowly there was food again."

Violet got up, pacing back and forth in front of the fire place. "What did he use? Chemicals?"

"Probably, no one really knows for sure."

I looked up at her, completely lost as to what they were talking about. "There are passages in the Bible that refer to The Man of Sin. He's said to use 'all kinds of counterfeit miracles and signs'." She explained.

"It doesn't really matter. It did what he wanted it to do-" Mason started.

"Give him a crisis he could solve where others failed." Violet cut him off and finished his thought.

"Exactly. People lost faith in The President, in the Government as a whole. There was a wave of religious radicalism after that. People thought he was our salvation. I don't want you to misunderstand, there were people who spoke out against it, but they were the minority." He pleaded.

I leaned back in my chair, desperate for any defense that would make me less guilty. "Doesn't the Bible say something about 'false prophets'? _No one_ realized what was going on?"

"Yeah, but there's one important qualifier when it comes to the Antichrist, he's not-" Violet started.

"Supposed to be able to say Jesus' name." Mason cut her off this time. "As the Bible tells it he would also deny God and Jesus. Michael's being so steeped in religion would, to most people, make it seem impossible that he was the Antichrist."

Violet shook her head as she paced. "Whatever his faults he was smart. How long did it take for him to come into power after that?"

"Not long, less than a year. The President disappeared, which was an incredible feat when you think about how much protection there is around him. And you're right he was smart. He exploited the fact that the President had suspended the Constitution as you knew it during the Grain Crisis, activating a nearly fifty year old presidential directive that created a-" He stopped looking to Noah for assistance. "How was it worded?"

"A cooperative among all three branches of the government and coordinated by the president will take the place of that specified in the Constitution." He supplied.

"Yeah, so basically the reins of government were in the hands of maybe a dozen people, and since the Constitution was suspended there was no order of succession, so there was an emergency election, and - big surprise - Michael won. After that he just kept using all these laws already on the books to keep himself there."

"How?" Violet's voice was distracted, and when a very large glass of something alcoholic appeared in front of me I realized it was because she had been mixing me a drink. I didn't even taste it, just swallowed mechanically, my mind dropping into some sort of I-spawned-the-antichrist fugue state as I watched the other three people in the room around me dissect it.

"Once he came to power he continued Operation Garden Plot and Operation Cable Splicer, which after the Grain Crisis had given the federal government the powers to restore order using the military domestically, and take over all local government. He took it a step further though activating all of Rex 84, which Garden Plot and Cable Splicer were subprograms of."

"Okay, you're going to have to explain what those things are because I'm clueless." Violet asked, lighting another cigarette, her calming poison of choice, as she continued pacing.

"Rex 84 is short for Readiness Exercise 1984." I snorted. How ironic. "Yeah. Basically it was an exercise to deal with the scenario of needing to detain massive numbers of people, American or not, deemed security threats or people involved in 'subversive activities' that threatened the stability of government. _That_ part of it hadn't been activated though until Micheal."

"What do you mean?"

"Rex 84 postulated the imprisonment of twenty-one million people. I don't know if that could happen in reality, but there were five or six hundred camps maintained by the government capable of holding millions of people, whether it's tens of millions I don't know..."

"Since when?" I snapped, disbelieving.

"Decades. Decades before he was even born; as I said he just exploited what was already there. They were always staffed and maintained, had roads and train tracks leading into them. There were three within a few hours drive of Los Angeles; they held over a million people, and one in Alaska was capable of holding a couple million on its own."

"Jesus." I hissed out, the full weight of it hitting me.

"So all he did was exploit all this stuff for his own benefit, and..." He cut off, suddenly looking apprehensive. "I'd hate for you to think... most people, they're basically good, you know? They're just trying to get through their lives as best they can."

"I understand." Violet said softly.

He was still looking at his hands. "The round-up's started soon after he came into power. First just people he deemed political dissidents - intellectuals, artists, scientists - all those sorts of people, then Muslims, then other immigrants. People got used to it." He raked his fingers through his hair. "Maybe not 'used to it', but people were scared. You never knew if someone would come for you in the night, and the people that were picked up never came back. If you asked too many questions about them you disappeared too."

"Makes sense. So what happened after that?" Violet said.

"More round-up's. This time it was the homeless, the mentally ill, gay and lesbians; basically any undesirable element that 'tainted our pure Christian heritage' as he put it."

"Nobody did anything?" I said wearily, thinking of Addie and Beau.

"Of course people did, some people, people like Noah and myself. We weren't rounded-up because we're gay; we were arrested, for lack of a better word, because of our 'subversive activities'."

"Really?" I could hear the smile in Violet's voice and turned around to glare at her, trying to convey that maybe now wasn't the time for her to get all warm and fuzzy about her brother's activities considering he was now dead.

"Really." He smirked back. "But it's an uphill battle. Everyone is under surveillance, and between that and people turning in other people to save their own skins it's nearly impossible to make any real difference."

"So what did you do?" I asked.

"We were Archives." I looked at him questioningly and he explained. "We stole important documents, made copies, and distributed them. He's been systematically erasing his history since he came into power, so we have been protecting and disseminating the information. The same thing with government documents like Rex 84; anything and everything we can get our hands on really."

"But you're dead. What happens to them now?"

"Others have them. We operated in a very decentralized network where the death of a few people would have no tangible impact. The information won't be lost."

I looked over both men carefully, could see something like anticipation and hopefulness in their eyes and realized they were still hard at work. "So what do you want from us?"

Noah turned and smiled at Mason, pleased that we were catching on as quickly as we were. "Whatever you can tell us. Anything might help."

Violet threw her hands up in frustration. "I don't know... I tried to kill him and failed. He was able to kill me even though I was a soul and not really human."

"When was that?" Noah asked.

"He was about ten or eleven. I only saw him once after that."

"What? When?" I whipped around to look at her.

"After you died. I went to see him before I came back here." She said sheepishly.

"You didn't tell me."

"Forgot."

"What happened?"

"Nothing. I knocked Constance out and tied her up." I smiled at the thought. "Talked to him for a bit and went to the beach, the one you took me to on our date, and drowned after watching the sunset."

"What did you talk about?" Noah asked, drawing my attention back to him and her brother.

Violet reached for my hand, and slipped the ring off my thumb. "I had this with me, or one just like it, and I told him about Luke 10:19; about how there will be one who he cannot harm. The little shit hadn't even read the Bible at that age." She stared down at my ring. "Well fuck." I looked back up at him. "He really took that conversation to heart didn't he?"

She collapsed in the chair next to me looking despondent, like somehow this was her fault and not mine. I crouched down in front of her, at a loss as to what to say to make her feel better, my frustration making my voice come out hard as I addressed the men who came bearing such terrible news.

"I don't think we can help." I said harshly.

"If you could just tell us about the house, about your time there. I mean any little detail might help even if you don't realize it." Noah said hastily.

"We don't blame you." Mason added, looking nervously from me to Violet and back again.

"Tell them." Violet said gently, her fingers caressing my cheek, and giving me a little reassuring nod when I looked at her, telling me silently she'll still love me after.

So I did, sitting on the floor below Violet one hand firmly clasped in hers. I told them all the history I knew of the house, every detail I could remember no matter how small and insignificant it seemed. I told them about growing up there, about Nora, and Vivien; every atrocity I'd ever committed in the confines of Murder House.

Violet picked up the story where I left off. How she killed Michael, and how he came back. How she died and came back. How we finally destroyed the energy of the house by killing Thaddeus and burning his stolen heart. A heavy silence filled the room when she finished, my hand still in hers. "Has anyone tried to kill him since I did?" Violet asked after a while.

Mason rubbed at his face wearily. "There have been news reports of attempts, but the Resistance could never find documentation supporting it, so it's probably all bullshit. Not that it matters, he's too well protected."

"Why would he need protection though?"

"Well he couldn't just tell the Secret Service to fuck could he?" I offered.

"Why not? I mean it's kind of perfect if you think about it. What would be more convincing that he's a gift from God than being immortal? Taking a bullet to the head and then popping up a few minutes later like he did when I shot him would be a pretty convincing miracle."

"Do you think breaking the power of the house affected him?" Mason asked.

"I don't know. _Maybe_. He's at least scared of it, I think." Violet mused, her fingers absently playing in my hair. "I mean my mom couldn't leave the house without getting really sick when she was pregnant with him, and it seemed like he had to be born there, so maybe."

"The Bible says the antichrist will die once and then be possessed by the Devil." Noah said.

"Yeah, but there isn't a The Devil." I smiled, dead baby or not Mason was unwittingly echoing Violet's words.

"Yeah, I mean the other stuff about those passages, but about him only reigning for three years before the second coming of Christ... none of that stuff fits." Violet said dismissively, bolstering Mason's argument.

"What is it you said about God being inside of us, Vi?" I looked up at her.

"When we act as Christ did - compassionate, loving, forgiving - that's where God is. There's both light and dark in us."

"And you said Hitler didn't have a soul, but he died. So what if it just takes time. I mean there's already a resistance; World War II wasn't won in a day. Maybe in time people will fight against him just like the Allies did." I was grasping at straws, I knew it, but it was all I had.

"Hitler didn't have hundreds of nuclear weapons at his fingertips." Violet quipped. "They don't have that kind of time Tate, and he'd go Dr. Strangelove before he gives up power."

There was a collective 'huh' as no one but Violet understood the reference. She rolled her eyes. "Mutually Assured Destruction? Did they teach you about that?"

We descended into silence again, and I asked the question that had been on my mind since I figured out why they were here. "What happens when you guys go back? Even if you figure out how to kill him or whatever, you're ghosts."

"We hadn't actually gotten that far. I guess, worst case scenario we have to wait until Halloween to pass on the information to the right people if we can find them."

"And not scare them into heart attacks."

"Yeah that too." Mason reached out, taking Noah's hand in his own and giving him an affectionate smile at their little exchange. "Maybe next time we see you, we'll have better news." Mason said as he stood to leave and Violet looked at him, bewildered.

"Can't you stay for a few days. I mean I'm sure my parents would love to-" She cut off when Mason held up a hand, stemming the flow of words out her mouth.

"We died close to Halloween, so we want to get back as quickly as possible, but we'll come back, I promise."

"Sooner rather than later." Noah added.

We walked them to the door, each of them shaking my hand and hugging Violet; Mason whispering something in her ear that brought tears to her eyes and a smile to her lips that I didn't catch.

My body was exhausted from the stress and worry of it all, and as Violet let me upstairs I felt a heavy burden of guilt resting on my shoulders. I was content to let her lay me down on the bed and curl around me, her fingers restless over me as if she was trying to brush away all the pain and remorse I was feeling.

Finally it broke past my lips, wet and tortured. "All those people Violet, all because of what I did." I rolled into her, letting her hold me through the tears and pain, my mind unable to escape images it conjured of the worst kinds of torture inflicted on millions of people who all had the faces of the people I loved, all because of what I did.

I wanted to push Violet away. I didn't deserve her. I didn't deserve this. I didn't deserve to have Violet kissing me gently as I cried, or having her hand rub my back soothingly. Maybe if I had been stronger I could have bypassed her comforting touch, but I couldn't.

She waited until my body couldn't make anymore tears, until my throat was so raw it couldn't make anymore sounds before she said anything. "I decided a long time ago that if it wasn't you the house would have found someone else to extend its powers beyond its walls. You were just as much a victim of it as anyone else there was. You were weak, Tate, perfect prey for it. When getting you to shoot up your school wasn't enough to satisfy it, it threw Nora at you."

"That's bullshit." I croaked out, every syllable raking painfully through my throat, but even if I didn't want to admit it, it did make me feel fractionally better.

"It doesn't matter to me if you believe it or not, I know it's true, just like I know it's true that you've changed. You're not the person who committed those crimes."

"That doesn't make it not my fault."

"No, it doesn't, but forever's a long time to feel guilty for things that you can't control."

"Well what else should I feel?" I snapped.

She looked at me narrowly for a moment before speaking again. "You're where you're supposed to be, Tate. If you hadn't changed why else would you be here? So feel what you need to feel, that's only right, but this time the person whose forgiveness you need is your own."

* * *

**A/N:**So there you have it. I'm leaving it open ended as to whether someone kills Michael or not. And Tate's Heaven is anywhere with Violet, which I know a few of you who left reviews asked to see his version of it, but for me that's it.

As always reviews are loved and appreciated :)


End file.
